Brave New Man
by River in Egypt
Summary: The war is won and it's a new world. It's all going to be better, right?
1. Chapter 1

**So, this is a story that came to me when I received my prompt for the Reverse Challenge 2014 over at Hawthorne &amp; Vine. It was a manip with a sparsely dressed Draco in ties and Hermione in a very dominating stance (and clothing) above him. It is called "Death Eater Auction" and contains the slogan "Do what you want with me, Granger", done by the wonderful Absolute. Go check out her work.**

**This story turned out to be too complex for the deadline of the challenge, therefore, I had to write a replacement and only now am I able to finish it. **

**This is the first chapter. I'm aiming to be done posting in the spring.**

**Warnings: while M rated, I didn't take the obvious route from the prompt. This story is rather angsty and partially dark. If you like Orwell and Huxley, this is for you. Mentions of torture, bodily harm, swearing, substance abuse, imprisonment, political intrigue, psychological trauma and manipulations, all stuff that occurs in a war-torn country, if not explicit, at least it's being mentioned. **

**Regular disclaimer here: Don't own any of Rowling's characters, only the plot development**

**Enjoy. Let me know how you like it. Be polite, please**

**River**

**P.S. If anybody can let me know how to get more space between paragraphs, please let me know. I've shift-entered my fingers bloody, wasted time, and nothing!**

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Chapter 1:

"What are we going to do with the young'uns?" Spencer Scrivener queried into the exhausted silence.

A firework went off somewhere in the hallway one level up. Kingsley Shacklebolt, the interim and most likely future Minister for Magic, heard the jubilation accompanying the screeching of a fire dragon and stroked over his tired face at the two-sided image: celebration and protest.

Outside, on the streets of Wizarding London and, to be honest, in the halls of the Ministry of Magic as well, the celebrations continued, despite the summer heat. Meanwhile, inside the courtrooms Kingsley was doing his best to root out the problem behind the collapse of society as they knew it – wizarding society that is.

Kingsley Shacklebolt and his council were confident that the Muggle Prime Minister had the rest of the country well in hand. Kingsley had made sure of it in his latest meeting with the man. The Muggle Prime Minister had been a little intimidated to see Kingsley's length unfold out of his fireplace; however, having been advised that this could happen in times of turmoil, such as the country had experienced with those many natural catastrophes, he had taken a deep breath, put on an uncertain smile, and welcomed the tall, dark wizard with a manly handshake.

Kingsley smiled to himself. Yes, Muggle Great Britain was shaping up again from the ravages of the Dark Lord and his followers, and, for those who were too traumatized from it, help in the form of Obliviation could be arranged. He had explained this to the Prime Minister who had listened intensely and sworn to inform Kingsley through the picture of the old man with the wig should the need arise. It remained to be seen if he really would, but the Muggle world was not really Kingsley's concern.

His concern was what to do with the chaos on _this_ side of the Leaky Cauldron. For one, it was quite an ordeal to drive out all of Voldemort's supporters and replace them with good law-abiding citizens who had their priorities straight and who wouldn't judge their fellow wizard by his or her blood status or alignments with purebloods. Kingsley had done a remarkable job turning the Wizengamot around, if he said so himself, appointing all remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix to it, and retiring anyone who couldn't name at least one Muggle or Muggleborn member in the last five generations of their family. This measure together with the incarceration of many a member of the old pureblood families took care of a large percentage of potential and obvious Voldemort supporters, thus ensuring a future legislature that would not disadvantage a huge part of their population, namely Muggle-borns.

"A very good question, Spencer." Shacklebolt was pleased that the question had been brought up by someone other than himself. It meant that he wasn't the only one thinking. Leaning back after a long session, Kingsley mused that it often felt like he had pulled the entire re-establishment of society out of his own hat.

Much to Kingsley's chagrin, the Death Eaters had not simply laid down their wands at the long-awaited and much celebrated exodus of their leader at the Final Battle of Hogwarts on May 2, 1998. Several, especially the Lestranges and Yaxley, had taken offense and subsequently rogue factions of former Death Eaters had popped up everywhere, wreaking havoc all over the country. Helped by the speed of Apparation, they, and other miscreants, had appeared erratically throughout the nation and left destruction, screaming children, and wailing families in their wake. Thus, the administration of Wizarding Britain had doused emergency fires since the Final Battle to prevent the country from falling into an anarchistic state of total destruction. It had taken all of the early summer to capture the last fugitives. Every last Auror and helping hero had been required to tag, follow, fight, and vanquish the mindless fanatics. With them safely stored away in Azkaban and their wands snapped, it was the decision of the Ministry to dole out their sentencing.

Lucius Malfoy had been the first one apprehended, but then, he hadn't fought very hard, or at all for that matter. Standing flummoxed in the middle of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, a never before seen incredulous expression on his aristocratic face, he had basically waved a white flag. With Narcissa's hand on his wrist, he had let himself being taken away when he realized that his family's dream of pureblood domination was broken.

This had likely saved himself and his family from the vigilantism that befell their wayward counterparts.

While the revolting groups had destroyed as much of the country-they-couldn't-have as possible, the common people had believed if they threatened to punish the "friends" of these rogues, the miscreants would stop to protect those once part of their group. Unfortunately, these people had banked on loyalty that just wasn't there and almost made themselves into criminals in the process. With magic, it was just too easy to take a life or to injure a fellow wizard without a second thought. Amadeus Parkinson and his screaming wife and daughter could attest to that. There had been an incident where the Aurors had arrived in the nick of time to prevent his public execution by the people living close to his estate. Blood boiled, and boiled over, under the calm and tired surface in the people's soul simply by looking at the turn their lives had taken due to this rebellious destructive group and the climate Voldemort had evoked.

After their removal, the punishment of these rogue perpetrators was the most urgent business of the day and so the Wizengamot had come together to convey the sentencing. Permanent incarceration, without pardon, ordered for all Death Eaters and supporters who had actively worked for He-who-could-finally-be-named-because-he's-dead. Their spouses and any supporters, whose degree of involvement was uncertain, would remain under house arrest behind magical barriers until further notice and with the full intention of making it as long lasting as possible. For life if they could justify it. Out of sight, out of mind, at least for the raging public.

All would be remanded to Ministry custody at the very least, while waiting for their trials, albeit it was a foregone conclusion that the ones in Azkaban would stay there for a long, long time. Only specifics like visitation rights, whether and for how long they would stay in solitary custody, and whether to re-install the Dementors for the right atmosphere to make the evildoers suffer appropriately would be discussed. That the Azkaban inhabitants would receive more company before long from the ones under house arrest didn't need discussion.

Kingsley passed the question about the Death Eater offspring on to everybody else in the room. "What with them?"

A nervous shuffling and clueless staring was the reply.

"Well …," came a hesitant calm voice.

"Yes, Arthur? Any ideas?" Kingsley leaned forward expectantly. Arthur Weasley was one of the newly established members of the Wizengamot. Kingsley would have appointed Molly Weasley as well, but Molly had other things to deal with at the moment.

As it was, Kingsley had put all Order of the Phoenix members on the Wizengamot, including Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who were now of age and, clearly, had earned the respect of every wizard and witch by defeating Voldemort. They were part of Wizarding history and had every right to be part of the new administration. This was the least in Kingsley's power to allow. Further, they deserved to be involved in the prosecution of those who had made their lives hell for the past few years. A hell they themselves had extinguished, under great personal sacrifices.

Kingsley took a deep breath to calm his anger and shifted his attention back to the father whose family had suffered great losses due to the war. Frederic Gideon Weasley had been buried with no less honour and fanfare than Albus Dumbledore.

"Well, it may be too late for the parents to see the errors of their ways. But if we don't take care of their children, of age though they may be, then we'll have another war on hand when they are old enough. We have to give them a chance to integrate themselves into society. Right now, they are outsiders who have lost the war and they will be despised wherever they go. They will be blamed and scapegoated for their parents' involvement. But if we put them together with our young champions and make them help clean up the mess the war created, perhaps we can mold their minds and help them see how wrong it all was."

Kingsley sat up. With a beaming smile, he focused on his old comrade-in-arms. "Now, that's an idea. How would we do this?"

"We leave them in house arrest in their respective homes, private schooling if they haven't finished Hogwarts yet, and at assigned times they have to go out with our young champions."

Due to their young age, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had taken a seat a little to the side of the Wizengamot auditorium. Therefore, Ron felt perfectly entitled, and sure that his father wouldn't notice when he scoffed quietly, "We are supposed to play babysitters for former classmates?"

Hermione admonished him distractedly with a hiss, while clutching his hand beneath the balustrade, which separated the seating area from the main area, but her attention was entirely focused on the discussion. "Do you have a better idea, Ron?"

Ron threw her an angry look. After their kiss before the Final Battle, he and Hermione were dating now, albeit, with little progress so far, as there had been very little time for it. Holding hands while sitting in public and private places was pretty much the only possible option. Due to Molly's state, Hermione didn't dare to stay overnight at the Burrow, and Ron didn't feel comfortable leaving his mother alone for long. None of the brothers nor Ginny did. With Charlie back in Romania, the siblings took turns staying at home for hours at a time.

Besides, Ron knew that Hermione, just like him, collapsed from exhaustion as soon as her head was close to horizontal. Until the nightmares came.

He shook his head dejectedly. He didn't like her treating him as if he hadn't done his potions' essay on time or with the required length of parchment, but time together was precious and so he didn't want to spoil the mood. He hoped, though, that she would stop nagging at some point. He couldn't take much more of it, what with his mother's illness and his own exhaustion, and the never-ending effort to pull peace from a war-torn country.

A disgusted voice piped up, pulling Ron from his introspection. Zador Smith showed the Golden Trio exactly where his son had gotten his mistaken sense of entitlement. Ron exchanged a knowing look with Harry on his left. His best mate and the saviour of the Wizarding world looked just as worn out as they all were, his green eyes sparkling unnaturally in a pale greyish face.

"We are supposed to let this Death Eater scum live in peace in their comfortable homes while we scramble to clean up after them? Put them to work, for crying out loud, is what I say. Put them in a temporary home and make them work if they want to eat. Manage their own groceries, cooking, cleaning, learning. I'd be happy to watch over them scrubbing floors. Home schooling in their puffy armchairs? Most likely in front of cozy fireplaces with House-elves serving hot chocolate," he scoffed.

"Zador, if we mistreat them,…" Arthur Weasley jumped in and then, with an upheld hand, stalled a remark from Smith before he could protest against the accusation. "… or if we even give them reason to _believe_ that they are mistreated, we lose them. They will never understand that they are not better than us if we do the same thing they would have done with us had the Dark Lord won. We have to bring compassion to them and treat them kindly."

Of course… ." Arthur quieted the uproar from his fellow Wizengamot members with his raised hands and minimally raised voice. "Of course, they shall not go to waste the time we give them. There are enough mouths to feed, people to care for, and damages to repair. They shall help. Perhaps they will understand, with every story they read to an orphan and every stable they muck out because the owner is injured and every house they rebuild for an innocent family, that we are all in the same hot cauldron and that we have to help each other. Something that _we_ will do anyway. They may even realize that they are not entirely blameless for the state we are all in."

Subdued nodding in some areas, angry mumbling in others was Arthur's reply. He added, "I'd be more than happy to take one into my home. My wife can certainly use a hand, now that she's …." He didn't complete his sentence. It wasn't necessary. Everybody knew the state Molly Weasley was in. The loss of her son and the mutilation of two others had left a deep, festering wound.

"How is she doing today, Ron?" Harry whispered.

Ron shrugged. "Same as yesterday." He accepted the soothing hands on his shoulders from his best friends for a moment but shook them off soon. He couldn't stand what he mistook for pity for long. It only fueled his anger over the state of his family.

"Muck out the stables, that's the best I've heard." Smith spoke up again. "And why not scrub their own floors?"

"Because if we force them to their knees, literally or figuratively, they will resist, Mr. Smith."

Ron startled when the clear voice cut into the aggravated silence right next to him. All heads turned to the side where they were sitting and focused on Hermione, who had stood up. You cannot live in a tent for a year with another person without knowing that person inside out. Ron knew Hermione's body language well, and Harry's long exhale on his other side confirmed what he thought: her whole body was primed for a fight, her face set, her shoulders straightened and bent forward, her feet in an authoritative stance. Firmly focused on her classmate's father, she continued, "Do you _want_ to raise a resistance?"

Ron wanted to pull on her hand to make her to sit down again, but when she stood up she had let go of his hand and, relieved, Ron put his hands between his knees and leaned forward, until his face was hidden behind the balustrade.

He really didn't like the attention of his father and all these other administrators focused on them. He knew Harry was okay with it, but Harry had grown so much over the past year that Ron wasn't sure he would ever catch up. He was still Ron's best mate and all was good when they were idly talking about Quidditch in the evening; however, the current climate made Ron realize at every turn that their childhood was over. This was no game and there were damages that had to be fixed. Being responsible wasn't really Ron's favourite pastime.

Ron sighed when he felt Hermione still standing next to him. However, he had to be responsible for a lot, these days. With his father and brothers at work, Ron helped George in the joke shop for hours at a time, to earn some money and to help his brother with the work and Fred's absence. He also had to spend time at home with his lethargic, despondent mother. His girlfriend, who should have given him some respite with some warm, cuddly feelings, on the other hand, wasn't lethargic or despondent, but rather explosive and aggravating. These days it didn't take much to get Hermione going. Ron suppressed a huff. It wasn't as if he didn't understand, they all had one difficulty or another to deal with, but he didn't get why Hermione, not Harry, claimed to need the most understanding of them all.

Bill had taken him aside one day, after Ron and Hermione had a blazing row in the back yard over something widely insignificant and hardly worth remembering, and explained one thing or two about women to his little brother. Ron had only listened with half an ear, feeling unrightfully blamed for what was clearly one of Hermione's moods, and thought that Bill had it easy. With Fleur pregnant and his wounds healing well, he seemed to have it made, despite the anxious times. Ron saw Bill's half-mangled face on the other side of the room, next to Percy and George. Fleur had refused to join the Wizengamot, claiming her French origins and her pregnant state as valid excuses. Instead, Bill quite sufficiently represented their bond. Despite the worry lines on his forehead and his somber features, Bill Weasley carried calm like a well-fitting coat that Ron had always envied.

Even with his brother's good advice, Ron still had no idea what to do with this girlfriend of his. She certainly didn't turn out to be the comfy, warm female body he had envisioned when kissing her back in the middle of the adrenaline rush of _the _battle of their lives.

Hermione was aware that Ron was anything but pleased with her. However, she really had other things on her mind besides stroking his dissatisfied ego. Of course, she wanted to make a go of their relationship. She loved Ron, didn't she? But it was difficult to concentrate on any one thing in these busy times and it was even more difficult to tolerate people's constant _need _to be the focus of attention. Especially when so much had been lost.

Arthur Weasley sent her a small smile. It was so reminiscent of Remus Lupin's way to praise a student's achievement that it drove tears into Hermione's eyes; Remus Lupin, who was no more; and Tonks, his wife, who had been a good friend; and Teddy, their son, who would grow up an orphan.

Hermione relaxed her shoulders a bit when Smith spluttered at her sharp remark. She hadn't been aware of how tight she was holding her back. She only noticed at night, when she got home, how much of a strain she was under each and every day. When there was only one thing that would help her through the night.

"Miss Granger," he began contemptuously, "as much as I appreciate your _expertise _in defeating dark wizards -" Hermione inhaled audibly. There could hardly be any doubting her _expertise__._ What was he playing at?

"- I would appreciate more if you left the expertise of administration to those who have _much _more experience in it."

Hermione huffed in exasperation. Was he really going to challenge her with his expertise in sitting in an office chair? "Like you, you mean?" she asked waspishly.

Zador Smith's eyes glowed fervently. "Like my entire department, yes. There can hardly be any doubt that Mesdames Braithwaite, Fittleworth, and Frobisher, and Mr Gagwilde have done a remarkable job in the last decade. Despite the impeding circumstances."

Mesdames Braithwaite, Fittleworth, and Frobisher nodded concurrently.

"You may be a _new_ Wizengamot member in your own rights -" He put the emphasis on _new._ "- but you still have a lot to learn."

"Mr. Smith,…" Hermione started, but before she could set to an hour-long explanation of exactly which kind of expertise hers was, Ron grabbed her arm in a quick determined move and pulled her down to her seat. "Enough, Hermione," he hissed. "Let it go. You made your point."

Hermione sat, staring wide-eyed at her boyfriend, and wanting to make a sharp remark, but Ron glared at her, and even Harry shook his head. This was not the time to fight.

Hermione huffed again when she felt overruled and silenced and, folding her arms in front of her chest, sat back in her seat.

"I just have the safety of our paladins in mind," Zador Smith provided with a smug smile at the disappearance of his opponent. His following grimace disproved his words. "How are we going to make sure that one of them isn't overpowered by a young Death Eater, kidnapped, tortured, and what have you?"

"They are not Death Eaters, Zador," Minerva McGonagall threw in. "You cannot punish the son for his father's sins."

Smith spluttered again. His angry muttering was drowned out by a formidable witch from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes adding, "Besides, we could take their wands away for the time they are with our young fighters. Or limit the wands' capacity for spell casting, if we were worried."

"Yes, we should definitely take their wands for the night, lest they hurt themselves or each other. It's for their protection as well as ours," Millicent Bagnold said.

"Well, I want them to end up in Azkaban should they refuse to comply, with both their new lodgings and the work they are supposed to be doing. One lash, one angry remark at one of our young heroes, my son included, and they'll be shipped off before they can say Slytherin," Smith remarked snidely. His followers and a few other Wizengamot members nodded vigorously.

"Yes, thank you, Smith, I'll keep that in mind," Kingsley acknowledged this remark impatiently. "If you prefer, we can vote on this idea to re-integrate the Death Eater children by having them accompany a good example of good citizenry for a set amount of time and do manual labour to clean up the war mess. Let's say assessments every few weeks, to evaluate if we can let them go? Raise your hand if you approve of this program."

The vote passed with a two-thirds majority.

Kingsley was relieved. One less thing to worry about. "I thank you all. Now, we need volunteers who will take one such child under their wings. One per family or person will do."

After the selection of potential volunteers to care for the children of Death Eaters, there was one more thing to do for the day. The most important one, actually.

Because punishing the villains was one thing, however, charting out how to run a country after a war quite another. And the changes to be dealt with, Merlin, were manifold.

"On the account of the dark magic spell used by Voldemort supporters, what shall we do, fellow wizards and witches?" the Minister queried his council.

"What _can_ we do, Minister?" a tired looking witch asked back.

Along with a number of arduous and hotly contested policy issues, such as the one they had just resolved, there were a variety of matters, some mundane others potentially catastrophic, outside the Wizengamot chambers that remained unresolved. The strain of post-war clean up and societal rehabilitation was beginning to show on everyone's face. Until now, it seemed there had been very little progress, especially concerning the reintegration of those from the opposition forces. With a solid plan approved to take care of that problem, perhaps they could devote their energy to the threats to their society that would not be legislated into submission.

One such issue to be dealt with was the residue of the magic that the maniacal supporters of the thankfully-deceased Voldemort had used. Voldemort had done his homework, inventing and bequeathing upon his followers a spell, which contained so much dark magic that it spread when other magic was used on it, creating something like a magical black hole. It lay waste to everything beneath it, the same way a Muggle atom bomb lay waste to everything it touched; ripping every living thing in its vicinity apart. When it was cast, no other magic could ever be used on the same spot. It wasn't a pretty sight when they first tried.

To impede matters, despite the celebrations of Harry Potter's win over the timely demised, people were angry, tempers were short and rash action the order of the day. This was the very reason why Kingsley Shacklebolt had pushed the prosecution of the perpetrators to the forefront, while ordering everyone else to help with the cleanup. This kept their hands busy, while giving him time to keep the bad guys from getting lynched.

Busy hands meant tired minds, and this extra physical activity had two advantages. One was that physically- busy people slept better. This was a welcome commodity in a community that suffered the consequences of war and nightmare abundance. The second was that physically exhausted people didn't have much of a mind to think about revenge, retaliation, or any other inconvenient-while-trying-to-re-build-a-state notion. This was particularly beneficial if you needed to rebuild this state brick by brick, literally by hand, because a population, which used magic for all kinds of everyday activities, combined in most unfortunate ways with the _Apocalypto_ spell.

Therefore, an entire civilization must learn to use their hands, and not their wands, for once in their history of magic, creating unprecedented circumstances and, in some cases, surprisingly positive side effects.

They _had _to be taught to use their hands. There was no other way. The positive effect of this, as Kingsley saw it, was that many wizards and witches would be able to appreciate what Muggles had been doing for centuries, and that would actually change the attitude toward Muggle-borns. Albeit Hermione Granger was the most powerful witch of her generation, Muggle-borns were still looked at sideways. They were to some people still the inherent reason for the recent war.

Now, having to work with their hands, Muggle-borns would become everybody's new best friends because they already _knew_ how to do it. And then, finally, everybody would realize that they were all the same.

What a favourable solution.

Kingsley couldn't help feeling a little vindictive toward the former Death Eaters who would not only rot away in Azkaban, but who would also have to watch all their tripe be refuted and turned to the contrary.

Kingsley allowed himself another private smile. He would have loved to see the face of Voldemort, Merlin forbid he would ever see the Dark Lord's face again, literally, when he realized that he had created the perfect opening for Muggle-borns to finally be completely accepted.

If only he could help the process further along. Time was of the essence.

With a tired sigh, Kingsley took the floor again. "I propose restricting the use of magic by the common lay person. Ignorance of the workings of the _Apocalypto_ spell will lead to people ignoring it; and we cannot teach everybody what exactly it does and how to get around it. Especially since we don't know it yet. So, for now we have to prohibit people from using magic at all. That will be the safest way."

A loud wave of outraged "Minister" cries swept his way. Seated as he was now, on the throne elevated on a dais, in the middle of the courtroom, he stared down his legislators. Voldemort had installed the gaudy piece for his own comfort, in a sudden deranged and mistaken belief that he had won the Ministry, and Kingsley had not bothered to remove the Sticking charm cementing it to the floor. He had figured, quite rightly it seemed, that it would be good to use the pompous piece of furniture as a reminder and a warning. Thus, he parked his behind on the smooth, solid black glass surface whenever he needed to drive a point in people's minds. He was aware of how it looked, a dark skinned wizard on a pitch-black throne, and was not opposed to the effect it had.

"How exactly would we be able to restrict magic, Minister? We cannot walk around and check every single family, every day." Zador Smith was one of the colleagues for whom Kingsley sat on this ugly monstrosity. Even after appointing everyone who was left from the Order of the Phoenix to the Wizengamot, there had still been places to fill for a full court. Smith was a senior secretary in the Department of Magical Cooperation. He had to be good for something. His entire family was Hufflepuff. How much damage could they do, for crying out loud?

Arthur Weasley interceded again, as Kingsley's newly-appointed second-in-command. A Muggle-loving Senior Administrator who had been actively involved in the war and both Orders of the Phoenix and who knew from personal experience how costly war was had seemed a good idea at the time. There had been enough fight. Now it was time to fiddle and to rebuild.

"We could put the trace on magic in general. So far, it's only been put on minors, to prevent them from accidental damage while they are not fully educated. But there's nothing preventing us from putting it on _all_ magic."

It was still a good idea, it seemed. Kingsley was pleased. "Excellent idea, Arthur. Thank you."

A groan went through the crowd. And then everybody talked at once.

"WHAT, clean our own houses? _By hand_?"

"Do _you_ know the right hand movement for a sponge?"

"No, but I've seen a picture of my grandmother who had one in her hand, once. Let's see if I can find it again."

"Got a shipload of pan scrubbers, brand new, nice greenish colour, for a special price."

"Mundungus, this is hardly the time."

"This is outrageous. I will _never_…"

"… just _wiping_ it down. It's not so bad."

"How can you _possibly_ think that we … And after all this mess, we cannot even clean it up quickly and be on our way to recovery?"

"What about our patients in St. Mungo's? It will take _ages_ to heal everybody the Muggle way."

"Kingsley, there will be protests. You cannot make everybody work by _hand__," _Minerva McGonagall cautioned.

Kingsley stood up. When this didn't stop the unruly crowd from muttering and yelling amongst and over each other, he stepped onto his ugly throne and cast a  
_Sonorus_ on his throat.

"Enough! Fellow wizards and witches, we have no other choice." His voice booming through the room finally drowned out the protests, albeit the silence was reluctant and tension-filled, as if the protests were barely held in check.

"We have no choice but to prohibit magic. You've seen what happens when we use magic on top of this dark spell. We will eradicate ourselves if we keep doing it. It will shred and annihilate us, the way it has done with Carlson's cows. Yes, we still have to give everybody a home and order, but we _will_ have to do it by hand. Listen, this is only a precaution until we found a way to counter the spell. _And_ it applies only to the common people."

More grousing answered him. It only stopped briefly when Harry spoke up with a frown. "Who do you mean by the common people?" Bated breaths waited for the answer.

Kingsley smiled grimly. "Everyone, except the Wizengamot members, selective teams helping with the re-building, and those who regulate compliance with the protocols for the non-use of magic. We have to put the trace on every spell, and we have to follow-up to see that people oblige, and for that we need to have an enforcement team, which will Apparate to every breach and reinforce the rule."

Hermione's deep inhale was heard despite the sigh of relief that went through the crowd.

Kingsley closed grimly. "I will make a public appearance to inform everybody of this immediate measure."

"How can we convince people that this is the only way? How can we make sure they will not become more violent in protesting what they will see as another vexation in these hard times?" Minerva McGonagall asked worriedly, over the top of the worried chattering that had taken up again.

Arthur Weasley joined his _Sonorused _voice to Kingsley. "Why, by giving them a good example."

It took the crowd two seconds to process this thought and then all eyes turned as one to the saviour on the side bench, sitting with his loyal companions.

"Harry?"

Harry Potter had sat quietly and listened to the uproar the administration was in. Thus addressed, he reluctantly asked, his low voice carrying in the abrupt silence, "What can I do?"

His best friend's father went to stand before him and said soothingly, "You don't have to do much, Harry. You've done more than enough in defeating Voldemort. But you could tell us about the time when you were growing up as a Muggle. What you had to do by hand, the cleaning, the cooking, the gardening. Tell us about burying Dobby by hand, out of respect. And when you decided not to go for greater power, the way Voldemort did. This will raise people's morale. To know that their hero has chosen, freely, not to use magic and that it is very possible to do things by hand, the way you've done it."

Harry looked disgruntled. "You want us to give up magic? Is this really the only way? And you want _me_ to promote it?"

In a warm fatherly touch, Arthur put a hand on Harry's forearm, which lay on the railing of the bench. "Not permanently, Harry. Just until we've found the way to eliminate this spell. Admittedly, it can take years, but there's no harm in working with your hands for years. However long it takes. We have no choice if we don't want to eliminate us all."

Harry nodded distractedly. "We've certainly lost enough people already. We cannot lose more because of the last of Voldemort's evil deeds." He turned to his best friends who had supported him through his entire ordeal. "Hermione? Do you see another way?"

On his far right, Hermione Granger looked just as concerned, and red-faced as if she had swallowed a huge dose of U-No-Poo, but shook her head quietly. "No, Harry. I think it's likely the only way to keep people safe."

Ron Weasley next to Harry simply shrugged his shoulders and grabbed Hermione's hand again, now that she was not ripping anybody's head off. He gave her an uncertain look. She smiled back and gave his hand a squeeze.

Thus counseled, Harry nodded again, this time with more determination.

"Atta boy, Harry." Arthur Weasley beamed and clapped Harry's shoulder.

The crowd cheered and it took a few minutes to establish enough calm again for Harry to ask for specifics.

"How are we going to do it? I cannot walk from person to person to talk to them. That would take years."

Kingsley stepped down from the throne, ever so glad to have Arthur Weasley on his side. When he picked up the thread, his deep _Sonorused_ voice left no doubt that this plan would work. He had to shout over the disquieted crowd, however, to make them understand.

"We can send out Patronus-like representations of Harry. In the Muggle world, there is a technique called holograms. We will apply the Patronus spell to Harry's representation and send a speaking picture of him around. Every day, people will gather in their homesteads and watch Harry's messages in form of this "Patrogram." Kingsley coined the new term on the spur of the moment and smiled satisfied internally. A new era required a new, fresh language; a language full of phrases that reflected progress and a new way of thinking. Out with the old, in with the new was going to be the new order of the day.

"Harry's Patrogram will be followed by instructions from Muggles and Muggle-borns, or any popular and well-known volunteers, telling them how to do their repairs by hand. This will give everyone advice on what to do and raise their spirits in a way that it is feasible, even if it is exhausting. We can also set up screens where his speech and the daily advice are repeated all day long."

When Kingsley had everybody's giddy attention through his shouting, he continued more quietly. "Arthur and I, along with a select group of assistants, will Apparate around and see how everybody is doing. We will personally visit every site of rebuilding, and St. Mungo's, and each and every family in need of support. We will encourage those who do well without magic and point out areas for improvement to those who need it. That will get the news around on the new order of the day. We have to pull together. When everybody has adjusted to the life without magic and we've either found out how the _Apocalypto_ works or have located all sites where it's been applied, we can slowly re-introduce select spells and charms without causing too much damage."

"What do we do if we need more advice than we get from those messages?"

Kingsley smiled at Zador Smith, the man with the uncanny ability to point out the fault in the system. "Why, you ask a Muggle-born who knows."

He let his words sink in for a minute, waiting for a revolted reply from Smith. It didn't come when Kingsley fixed him with a glare.

With a satisfied nod, Kingsley carried on. "Of course, we will have to establish new Offices in the Ministry. This measure has to become the law for the time being, ergo, we will need a government body to regulate it. We'll call it the Office of Manual Skills Education &amp; Support. Everybody can turn to it to receive advice. Arthur, may I ask you to be the Department Head?"

Overwhelmed at the thought of all this extra work, "by hand," that was coming their way and barely able to go back to the business at hand in their emotional turmoil, the Wizengamot members, looking like a bunch of stupyfied pixies, turned toward Arthur Weasley. Hermione saw the thoughts behind their shocked faces one minute: not me, don't choose me, I want nothing to do with this extra work; and the relief in the next when Arthur Weasley had been called upon. She ground her teeth to keep silent. She understood the fact that nobody wanted any extra burden in times like these; but if everybody was avoiding extra work, they were not getting anywhere. Everybody had to carry an extra parcel.

After the crowd's reaction, it seemed a forgone conclusion to have Arthur Weasley take responsibility for doing things the Muggle-way. Nobody objected. When Arthur nodded his consent, the crowd visibly calmed, and Kingsley gladly moved on. He felt like a man at a children's birthday party who had to tell the crowd that the dog ate the cake. The reluctance to give up traditions, on top of dealing with the damages from the war, led to a hysteria that bubbled barely under the surface. People needed a plan; they needed structure, and fast.

"Please, establish your team as soon as possible. I will see you in my office after this session. You will also be responsible for the daily newscast conveyed in the Harry's Patrogram and advice on how to do things Muggle."

We will also need a Ministry office to monitor and assess situations and locations where the use of magic won't interact with the curse and where it might; to check the safety of people living close to it; and to enforce the proper non-use of magic. This team of compliance officers will have to have a homebase. Let's call it the office of Magic Usage Safety and Surveillance."

After a short moment of digesting the instructions forcefully presented to them by their new leader, the Wizengamot collectively nodded heads.

Kingsley gave them a short take-away message to chew over privately. "Magic is out, relying on Muggle-born knowledge is the new order of the day. Tell everybody. We have to establish this as quickly as possible. Dismissed."

Kingsley nodded grimly when he watched the few hundred wizards and witches who were responsible for the Wizarding world's future legislation file out of the courtroom. It might seem overly simple, but it was a good solution, to simply rely on somebody who knew, in this case, Muggle-borns.

If only Voldemort had thought of asking for better advice, it would have saved them a lot of trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Draco Malfoy was peeved beyond comprehension. How could he have ended up here? The scion of an ancient and noble line effectively dumped, as it were, in a common two-story house, far from civilization, with all the Death Eater children and, by the look of it, not even a luxurious home.

He wasn't naïve. He hadn't expected a palace, of course. He knew they were being punished. When the Ministry officials had come to the Manor and told him to pack a few essentials, then brought him here, he had known that something unpleasant was transpiring.

As if the new order of the day wasn't unpleasant enough already.

_He had gone with his mother to the Ministry by invitation a few days ago and had watched with growing incredulity the Minister's public announcement that all magic was henceforth prohibited. The Minister had wanted to appear kind, speaking of trust and pulling together as a populace, hence, he hadn't asked for them all to hand in their wands. How would they have gotten home? Call a cab the Muggle-way, to a house that no cab-driver was able to see?_

Right.

_Still, the Minister had cautioned them ardently not to ignore this order. _

_He had warned them all that there was a magic out there, an uncontrolled magic that would destroy all life if they continued in their old ways. In time, he had softened his thundering warning; the government would be able to assess each spell necessary for living and the situation in relation to this dooming magic. Gradually, they would re-introduce magic, testing the safety of its use. But for now, magic had to stop!_

_He had subsequently explained that henceforth the trace would be put on all magic, instead of just underage magic, yes, even the most mundane household spell, and warned them that each spell cast without permission would be investigated and possible sanctions enforced. He had then introduced a team of controllers who would do the follow-ups. Draco had just about been able to keep his face from sneering when he saw Smith's father at the head of the group. His mother had noticed his twitching facial muscles from the side and closed her hand warningly around his arm, hidden between their bodies. Draco knew Zacharias Smith of old, and his family. Heck, his whole family knew Smith's family. Fortunately, Smith had been smart enough during their Hogwarts years to stay away from Malfoy and his associates._

_The crowd's reaction echoed Draco's feelings on the matter. There had been a tumultuous uproar and only a few Stunners and silencing charms on the most outspoken and volatile listeners in the front rows had restored order. Shacklebolt had tried to soothe the short-tempered crowd with calm explanations of the help everybody could expect. He had reached for Potter, standing a little in the shadow of the tall Shacklebolt, encouraging him to step to the front of the stage. The Minister and Arthur Weasley on both sides of Draco's former classmate had told the heart-warming, to Draco it was nausea-inducing, story of Harry's life and how he had grown up without magic. Potter had looked grim and, if Draco didn't know how much Potter loved the limelight, he would have thought that the slimy saviour of the Wizarding world wasn't quite convinced of the idea his government was promoting. Shacklebolt and Weasley had driven on the point that, in the coming weeks and months, aid would be available for those trying to put their lives in order. True, hands-on help. No one would be alone with his sorrow and worries; there were two new Ministry offices, which would support people in their ordeal._

_When people muttered and murmured again, Shacklebolt had glared at the front row of his audience and pointed out that he was only the one responsible for tidying up the mess. The blame, of course, lay elsewhere. Draco remembered how hot it had become under his collar when people had turned around at the Minister's words, searching through the crowd, searching for the wizards and witches, and their relatives, who /i_were_i responsible. This had been the point, at which Draco and his mother had surreptitiously departed without a backward glance. _

_As soon as they had touched ground at Malfoy Manor, Draco had let go a barrage of curses and insults at the new legislation, and the Order, and Potter, and anyone else associated with them. Spells shooting from his wand had burned the grass and shrubbery alongside the walkway. His mother had stood by quietly watching his tantrum, before walking steadily toward their grand entrance. Narcissa had neither stopped nor encouraged her son; not until the first howler had arrived, that was. _

_Every day they received howlers for their participation in the war from people who were trying to place the blame for the misery they were living in on someone. These howlers were never able to cross the protective wards of Malfoy Manor; only through the reports of the house-elves did Draco and Narcissa know of their arrival. However, this was an official howler, with the stamp of the Ministry for Magic, Office of Magic Usage Safety and Support, and it had passed the ancient magical boundary of the Malfoy property due to its lawful authority. Draco's father had naturally altered the protective shields to recognize and allow legitimate post from the Ministry to pass through. _

_This howler addressed Draco directly. The nasally voice of Mafalda Hopkirk reiterated that all magic was prohibited and that all use was monitored by a spell-trace. Furthermore, this was to be his first, and only, warning. If he did not desist immediately, the team of professional controllers would be dispatched to his place of residence and confiscate his wand post-haste. At which point, his mother had taken Draco's wand hand and said calmly, "Stop, Draco. This is a fight you cannot win."_

_Draco had conceded. After what he'd seen during the Ministry announcement, Smith was one of the professional controllers, and judging by his demeanour, strutting about on stage, not the lowest one. Draco had absolutely no desire to meet Smith in a power position on his home turf. He quite liked him begging his father from a rather lower standpoint, on his knees ideally, thank you very much. With immense restraint, he had therefore resisted firing another Incendio, and abided his mother's wishes. _

In hindsight, Draco still grumbled at the memory of this humiliating and outrageous reprimand from the government. However, he also knew that he should consider himself lucky they hadn't thrown him into Azkaban with his father. Still, he couldn't help thinking how close the final confrontation between Potter and the Dark Lord had been; how easily the Dark Lord could have won. Then he would still sit in Malfoy Manor with these insipid idiots for servants. And more. Surely, in his triumph, the Dark Lord would have been generous, forgiving his failures and allowing him to live as he pleased? He was a Malfoy, after all.

With simmering anger, Draco thought that Potter had gotten lucky instead – as he always did. Surely, that was the whole secret about Potter. Luck. Even when they were to win it in the form of Felix Felicis he'd had luck. It could have been the only reason, truly.

With certain bitterness, Draco wondered why the luck was never with him? Why was he being herded with all the stupid Slytherin cows and other unlucky fellows to live in this substandard hovel instead of being lauded and worshipped as the royalty of wizarding society? He was a Malfoy; he was a Pureblood, why in the world was he being punished?

He was barely even of age; surely, they were not going to hold him responsible for following orders under threat to his parents' lives? No, this was the light side; they would never go so far as that. Would they?

Sure, if his side had won he would have done every imaginable thing to humiliate them – and then some. But not them. They couldn't do this. At least, he hoped they couldn't. However, he would rather eat Blast-Ended Skrewts than admit he was nervous about what this new initiative would bring.

Scandalised, he watched the people across from him. Naturally, they came with their full entourage. The irony was it was not at all dissimilar to the Dark Lord actually. Voldemort had always liked a dramatic entrance.

Now, let's see, Potter the Saint, accompanying the interim Minister Shacklebolt; Arthur "poor-blood" Weasley and his youngest in a long row of sons, insert ridiculing snort here; honestly, hadn't they heard of the pregnancy prevention charm Draco wondered. Smith was there, of course – never missed an opportunity to exert power over people if he had the chance, the worm. Further, Minerva McGonagall, the mother hen, always caring for students - Draco briefly remembered her upset over Moody's treatment of him. Next to her was an old man, who looked a lot like Dumbledore, especially the sharp blue eyes and had to be his brother Aberforth; then, a small and wiry, lively wizard with his hat askew; a middle aged witch with soft, long brown hair; three ancient members of the Wizengamot, Griselda Marchbanks, Quirinius Tofty, and Dydimus Frobisher; last, and absolutely least, Mudblood Granger. If only Severus had survived, they would have brought a little sense with them, at least.

As they were herded into what would become their large common room, not unlike the dorms at Hogwarts, Draco came to stand next to Pansy, eyeing the opposing side one by one. A snide remark pulled Draco out of his quiet contemplations.

"May I show them now where the brooms and wipes are, Minister?" Zador Smith's voice cut through the air as soon as the mass of young adults came to a halt. Draco shot a sharp, sideways glance at the offender, but he didn't need to bother. The collective wince that passed through the crowd of Ministry representatives was palpable. Draco noted smugly that Smith was not on even ground with the good side either, eager as he was to appear so. Granger on the other hand looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there. Draco watched her massage her temples with both hands and felt an unusual twitch of connection to the witch. He, also, would rather not be there; even if that was the only thing they had in common.

Hermione felt a headache coming on, as a twitch of anger leapt up from her stomach. Could one do more damage with a single sentence, she pondered. Surely, Voldemort would have given Smith a medal for the pure destructive power of just opening his mouth. It didn't help that she felt somebody staring at her, but she kept her eyes low and her mouth shut to minimize her involvement. Surely, the shorter this confrontation, the better, she thought.

"I'll take it from here, Smith," Kingsley said in grim reply, though it made little difference.

The severity of the situation demanded that Kingsley, as the Minister, appear personally as a sign of good faith. They wanted to befriend these young adults, make them part of their community. Showing them some respect by a personal appearance of the Minister was the least they could do.

The only problem was that it didn't go as planned. Of course, many if not all of them had seen the Minister personally before, if not this version then one of the previous ones – their parents had been influential enough. Thus, they took it as the utmost condescension that he showed up now, before they were being locked away.

Cuttingly cold was the attitude of those young adults, twenty-two young wizards and witches, as they unconsciously closed ranks against the perceived threat of Kingsley and his consort. More from habit than design, Draco Malfoy happened to stand at the apex of the line, flanked by Parkinson, Nott, Zabini and Goyle, clearly leading the group, as expected. However, a few younger ones hid behind the older and taller ones, seemingly seeking the protection of their more experienced brethren. They hadn't perpetrated any crimes, and it was clearly written in their faces that they weren't quite sure what charge was brought against them.

Well, Kingsley thought, you'll soon find out. Not willing to give these children any more leniency when faced with their resistance, he spoke in his calm, commandeering voice.

Listening to the Minister's address, Hermione used the opportunity to watch her former schoolmates. Behind their haughty, closed-off expressions, she saw what she recognized as the uprooted uncertainty she had felt when she started Hogwarts. She remembered this feeling well because it had followed her through the halls of Hogwarts until Harry and Ron had saved her from the troll.

They were quite right to be uncertain, these young adults, Hermione thought. Their circumstances were clearly different from her need for education at age 11, and, other than the apparent crime of belonging, by kith or kin, to the side that had lost the recent war; there was no reason for them to be there. Looking at this group, barely more than children, Hermione felt a sting of doubt that separating these children from their parents made any sense.

"We've explained to you what you can expect for the next few months, or years, although we dearly hope that it won't take quite that long. As a sort of house arrest due to your young age, you will live here with your fellows, other young adults who are by family connected to Voldemort's supporters. Studies, if you need to finish your education, will be done here. There will be tutors coming who will teach you and other supervisors to aid with any difficulties in adjusting to your new way of living.

You have likely heard the dire situation we are in. Thanks to the little 'gift' Voldemort -" Everybody flinched, and Harry chuckled briefly. Hermione sighed at the thought of how far they still had to go if people hadn't yet accepted speaking, or hearing, Voldemort's name or the fact that he was dead and gone. Kingsley continued without pause, "- and his followers left us, we cannot use magic as we are accustomed to if we do not want to condemn ourselves to vanishing into the ether."

"Prove it," came a daring reply from the crowd. Kingsley smiled grimly.

"Mr. Malfoy, I have been elected the Minister for Magic because I am able to govern a large group of people. That requires that I make decisions without having to prove they are necessary. Your fellow community members elected me." Malfoy's face showed his dismay at the spot-on reply; satisfied, Kingsley continued. "It may not suit you, but they did. There have been enough people from the administration present to see what happens if we apply magic anywhere near the Apocalypto spell. Fortunately, the only victims so far were cattle and not humans. There's not even enough meat left to roll a meatball. I will not have anyone, witch or wizard, child, pet or even Muggle subjected to the same under my watch."

Kingsley met Draco's angry glare with one of determination. The old Wizengamot members muttered supportively. Draco ended the uphill battle by looking away first. He felt a bit like a Grindylow out of water, wrong-footed against what appeared a closed government line, and it didn't sit well with him. After all, his father had always achieved so much because he knew how to have the government on his side. Draco's anger flared again when he realized that he was not quite in the same position as his father had been. Rather to the contrary. Again with the rotten luck.

As a small consolation, he couldn't help feeling gratified that the Dark Lord hadn't gone without a fight and that, even posthumously, he was still putting up a struggle.

"So, the Dark Lord left a piece of himself behind, is that what you're saying … Minister?" he said sarcastically.

Kingsley eyed him like an unpleasant insect. "Luckily, no. Voldemort is gone for good and we will find out how to undo this spell of his. Until then, however, we will have to proceed with caution and resist using magic. Since we don't exactly know where they have used this spell, it serves better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough. Your common house here is safe enough to allow for a few household spells, without crumbling to pieces, but it would be best for you to learn how to take care of yourselves entirely without magic. This will be one of the purposes of your stay. We want to see you acquaint yourself with the way Muggles do things and to gain some perspective."

He turned back to address all of his listeners.

"You will each have your own room, which will be locked for the night at 8 pm and re-opened at 6:30 every morning. This is for your own protection. We will not condone anything untoward, be it fighting, bullying, or other activities. You are mostly adults; please behave that way, if you do not want to be stripped of privileges." A collective scoff answered him. Thinking of privileges was the last thing anyone was doing in the current situation. They were being submitted to circumstances little better than outright imprisonment. Kingsley ignored their protest and kept his face straight.

"A supervisor will ensure that you have everything necessary to feel comfortable enough. This is a temporary measure for you. We would like to see you becoming citizens of our society we can trust again. You will understand, of course, that given your family history, we are unable to do so at the moment. Every day, you will take part in the cleaning and reparations of the damages done in the recent war against Voldemort." Everybody flinched again. Harry rolled his eyes and grimaced. Kingsley continued without pause.

"You will be sent with a government representative who will report on your behaviour. They consist of your former classmates and other volunteers, who are helping with the clean-up voluntarily. We will call them your partners. I strongly advise you not to consider, let alone do anything untoward to your assigned partner. Even though you will go out without your wand, should you be foolish enough to even attempt attacking your partner, your house arrest will be turned into a considerable stay in Azkaban quicker than you can blink." Drawn to his full height, his features arranged in a stern expression, he looked striking. Kingsley was a commandeering presence at the best of times, but utterly lacking a typical politician's slick veneer of indifference. If he was exasperated, you knew it, just as you knew when he was pleased. That easy readability made him seem all the more formidable when he assumed the bearing of his official role.

"Your partners have been selected for you. They will come by tomorrow to pick you up and bring you to places where your help is most urgently needed. Everybody's help is needed and everyone's work holds value in these times. You and your partners will do the same work, side by side. In this undertaking, we are all equal and there is much we can learn from each other. At the end of each day, you will be brought back here where you can fix your meals and clean and mend your clothes with help from your supervisor before you are secured for the night."

He gave a stern look to each of them in turn. "Your partners will report to me and my advisor. Arthur Weasley is my second-in-command and oversees this entire enterprise. He does have your well-being in mind. If we had gone with the opinion of most people in this country, you would have all joined your parents in jail. However, we don't want you to continue thinking in black and white like that. We know that you didn't really do anything to help Voldemort come to power, except abiding by your parents' indoctrination, and we cannot fully blame you for your lack of choices. Therefore, we are giving you the chance to prove that we can trust you. Do not disappoint us by doing anything foolish and do not forfeit your chance to prove yourself to us. If you are not stupid, show us. We will be watching you."

After another stern look at the crowd in front of him, Kingsley added, "Any questions?"

Thus encouraged, a timid looking girl asked, "You take our wands?"

The Minister of Magic looked grim. "You heard what I said about the indiscriminate use of magic close to the Apocalypto curse and learning not to use magic?"

Above the incredulous muttering and grumbling one question was heard. "What if we have to go to the toilet at night?" a girl seeming close to tears asked tentatively from the back.

Harry answered with a sneer. "Then you will use this fabulous Muggle invention called 'toilet paper' instead of a Scourgify charm. Try it, it's fabulously soft. We've supplied each of you with enough rolls to last you a few weeks. Make sure you wash your hands afterward, however. "

Arthur Weasley supported him in a more fatherly fashion. "You will find that we've supplied you with everything for your comfort. Your respective supervisor will help you find what you need without using magic."

Kingsley's voice thundered over Arthur's warmth. "We will read you the list of your partners, now. They will pick you up tomorrow morning and take and guide you to your first assignments."

"Pansy Parkinson – Ronald Weasley." Pansy inhaled sharply, before holding her breath. The entire room fell silent until the next pair was read, caught in the tension of unexpressed emotions where revolt would usually have been.

"Blaise Zabini – Dean Thomas." Zabini sought eye contact with his former classmate and gave a short nod. Dean gave him a small smile.

"Ursula Penkridge – Luna Lovegood." One of the timid looking girls in the back poked her head up for a brief second, and then hid again just as quickly.

"Tracey Davis - Hannah Abbott"

"Gregory Goyle - Neville Longbottom"

"Grogan Stump – Seamus Finnigan"

"Declan Hayworth – Percy Weasley"

"Darius Vaisey – Zacharias Smith."

"Harrick Newbourne – Michael Corner."

"Theodore Nott - George Weasley"

"Orla Quirke – Susan Bones"

"Miles Harper – Katie Bell"

One by one, pairs of names were read, until all, but one, were matched.

"What about Draco?" Pansy Parkinson asked into the silence that followed the expectation of the last pair of names. Draco used every ounce of his Malfoy discipline to appear as though none of this concerned him. It didn't, did it? For the uneducated onlooker, he looked utterly disinterested.

Kingsley made his none-of-your-concern face. "We will tell him tomorrow." The rest of the team next to the Minister looked a little disconcerted and restless.

Draco felt the same way. Again, he would never admit it, but to be the only one not paired made him feel incredibly isolated. He couldn't show it, of course. Looking for a weak point in the other party's line, Malfoy caught Hermione's restless gaze and smirked provocatively, a motion that didn't reach his eyes. Hermione felt a shiver going down her spine at the utmost loathing she saw there; the bite of a young man whose future had been destroyed for the time being. She tried to tell herself that it was his own fault and made a face back at him, before looking away haughtily. When Draco chuckled darkly, however, she felt the same humourless outrage churning in her and she almost joined him just to let it out. She felt a little nauseated over the absurdity that she and Draco Malfoy could ever feel the same thing at the same time. Preposterous.

"Well, if you have no further questions, we'll give you time to settle in. You will find the larder well stocked, but you have to prepare your own food; as well as cleaning and caring for your clothing, linens, personal hygiene, et cetera. No House-elves allowed. Your supervisors will demonstrate until you've learned it. Don't even think about manipulating your supervisors by pretending you are incapable of mastering these tasks. We know what you i _are_ /i capable of accomplishing should you put your minds to it. Do not think you can trick us. Every try will work against you. You're not at Hogwarts anymore. This is not a detention of sorts where you can dawdle along, feigning incompetence or disinterest, until your time is up. We want to see you thrive, to become worthy citizens of our community who can contribute to the common welfare, not paying through the nose to get your way or waiting out your time. i _You_ /i have to show i _us_ /i that you can.

You have an hour to settle in, and then Headmistress McGonagall and Mr. Diggle, your supervisors for today, will collect your wands and lock you into your respective rooms until tomorrow morning. You will find bathrooms adjacent to your rooms and you can stock up on snacks so you won't go hungry at night, but other than that you won't have any access to the rest of the house or any contact with your house mates.

When your supervisor wakes you at 6:30 tomorrow morning, do get up and prepare yourself for a day of work. We will not tolerate tardiness and disrespect to your partner.

Show us what you can do and that we can trust you and we will release you back to your life. Remember, even a failed attack on your partner or supervisor, or anyone living here with you, will earn you a prison sentence. We will assess you every few weeks, based on the reports of your partners. As soon as we are satisfied, you can go. Until then, take this time and learn as much as you can about how to be an independent individual willing and able to serve the common purpose. Good evening."

With those final words, Kingsley gave a curt nod to the crowd of young wizards and witches and walked out. Harry, following right after the Minister, turned to cast a final appraising gaze over his former school mates, while Hermione left without looking back at all, pulling arms tight around her midsection and hunching her shoulders up to ward off her shivers. She just couldn't stand the sight of those scared and scorned children torn away from everything they'd ever known, deposited like refugees in an unfamiliar place to bear the weight of rebuilding their lives amongst the uncertainty of this new world. Ron, on the other hand, smirked in the direction of Malfoy and Pansy, basking in satisfaction at how the tables had turned, until Arthur took his arm and pulled him away with a mildly admonishing headshake.

Minerva McGonagall stayed behind; next to her was the small, wiry wizard with the hat askew who seemed unable to stand still. Her gaze was as unyielding as it had been at Hogwarts, but she had grown older, Draco noted. He filed it away in his mental storage of material to be used as leverage that even McGonagall had grown weaker from the war.

Her severe tone refuted her appearance. "Welcome to your new house, the Detainee Education Niche. This will be your home for the coming months. How long exactly it will stay your home will depend on you and your behaviour alone. You heard the Minister: the faster you show us you appreciate your fellow wizards and witches, the faster we can release you.

Until then, we will help you to become as comfortable as possible under the circumstances in this house. This is not a prison; however, we have to have your protection and re-education in mind.

We will give you an hour to settle in. During this time, unpack your necessities and please come to Mr. Diggle or myself with any questions you have regarding tasks you need to complete without magic. You may always make the choice to partake of a cold supper, especially in this hot weather; however, it is not impossible to light a fire without a spell. We will be happy to demonstrate this. Now, move along."

Having dismissed them, she left the common room with Deadalus Diggle trailing behind, making their way toward a supervisors' room near the entrance of the house. The small wizard turned around with a last encouraging smile to the small crowd of young people and closed the door behind him.

As soon as the door shut with a click, Pansy hissed, "Why couldn't they find anybody for you, Draco?"

Draco Malfoy, his eyes still firmly fixed on the door, replied grimly, "Because I'm too important. They don't want to screw with me the same way as they'll do with you. Because they know they'll have another Dark Lord on their hands, with my family's influence and money and magical power. Partners, my foot. These "partners" have been selected on their ability to "handle" us."

A bark of laughter close to the window was the answer, and everybody turned at the unexpected noise. Blaise Zabini stood with his arms folded and a challenging expression on his face.

"Got a problem, Zabini?" Draco pressed out with barely restrained anger.

Blaise chuckled in response. "Not I, Malfoy. But if you think that you are still that important to them, you better think again."

Draco took up the challenge without a blink. "Is that so? Then how do you explain our being sequestered here if we are not important to them? Why confiscate our wands and trap us here, unless it's because they are afraid that we will rise against them as truly loyal servants of our Dark Lord, joining the others in carrying out his will even after his demise?"

Zabini shook his head. "He was never i _my _/i Dark Lord. So, for one, I wonder what I'm doing here aside from being a scapegoat for the likes of you, Malfoy. Before I elaborate on why i _you_ /i, personally, haven't been running around the country and destroying as much as you can, like those i _loyal_ /i idiots wreaking magical chaos and leaving us with utter bedlam, let me state quite clearly that I have no, nor will I ever have, any intention of reliving any of these completely barmy times we witnessed under You-Know-Who. I couldn't care less about Muggles and Muggle-borns, and I leave them alone if they leave me alone."

He had moved closer while speaking and was now standing face to face with Malfoy, who was a few inches shorter than Zabini. "Unfortunately, I failed to adequately distance myself from you while in school, and now I'm stuck with the stigma of being a Slytherin and in league with the likes of you. I have no idea what the next few weeks will hold for us, but I can tell you one thing for certain, Malfoy: partner or handler, I'll do the work that needs to be done and I'll be out of here in no time, unless they try to make me clean their bogs, which I will outright refuse on grounds of being simply humiliating. You will i _not _/i stand in my way with your antiquated and, frankly, ridiculous notions of pureblood supremacy."

"Take it easy, Zabini." Before Draco could say a word in response, Theo Nott had come up from behind Blaise and put a calming hand on his shoulder. Pansy had made her way halfway in front of Draco, as if to shield him, and Goyle stood behind Malfoy's right shoulder, where his place had always been, and cracked his knuckles. "Draco's not that keen on pureblood supremacy."

"Oh, I'm not, am I, Nott?" Draco jeered. "Don't embarrass yourself by trying to make anyone believe that you could i _possibly _/i know what I think." Infuriated by the whole situation and the fact that, somehow, he had been singled out as the villain amongst all those assembled here, Draco lashed out against everything and everyone. "Pansy, get away from me. Do you really think I need your protection? Go; coddle some of those whimpering geese over there." He indicated the sofa where Ursula Penkridge and Heather Thatcham, the two girls who had dared to ask questions before, sat crying.

"Zabini, don't you see what they are doing, these blood traitors? They are putting us together and expecting us to turn on each other. Isn't that the Slytherin way, after all? Every man out for his own, using any means he can to get to the top."

"I'm not a Slytherin," 16-year-old Grogan Stump remarked. He was quickly silenced with a dark look from the young men facing off.

"Don't you see?" Draco urged on. "That is just like them, these Muggle lovers, arresting us and letting these Mudbloods rule over us just so they can convince themselves that their dirty blood doesn't make them inferior. It's outrageous. Oh, why couldn't the Dark Lord have been less naïve? What a stupid mistake to make, not to know how exactly the Elder Wand changed allegiance."

"Come on, Draco. You couldn't have known about the Elder Wand," Nott supplied snappishly, miffed by Draco's rebuke.

Draco sneered. "Don't be daft, Nott. Of course, I knew about the Elder Wand; every pureblood worthy of magic knows about the Elder Wand. He never asked me about the bloody thing, and, if you knew anything about the Dark Lord, you would know that you do not presume to insult his intelligence by offering information he has not asked for. Not if you value your sanity."

Zabini turned away with a huff, shaking Nott's hand off in the process. "I don't care, Malfoy, how important you think you were to You-Know-Who. I don't care about your stupid Mark. None of it matters now anyway. Just don't get in my way. I want to get on with my life."

Theo gave Draco a last exasperated look and turned away as well, ambling toward some of the younger boys, Declan Hayworth and Miles Harper, who sat by the other window looking rather intimidated.

Pansy scowled from where she sat on the sofa with the frightened girls, and Goyle looked so confused that Draco felt his temper swell again. What was wrong with all of them? Nothing had changed and they still had a common enemy: Potter and his side.

"Are you going to let them do this to you without as much as a smidgen of protest, mates? Where is your pride? Your sense of duty? Are you really going to go blithely along, allowing them to herd you about like sheep?"

His fellow housemates were saved from answering when Minerva McGonagall came in at this moment to shepherd them into their respective rooms. "Girls, follow me, please, up to the second floor. The boys will stay on this level and follow Mr. Diggle to their respective rooms. Let's get you settled for the night. I'm sure there are still some questions."

Her expression left no room for discussion. Pansy took Ursula and Heather by the hand and, following behind her former Deputy Headmistress, led them up the stairs with a last disgruntled look at Draco. One by one, they filed out, each sparing him a glance, until Draco was the only person left, alone in the room. With a muttered oath, he grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen and went to the back of the house where the boys' rooms were located.

Draco listened with half an ear, as the over-eager Mr. Diggle explained the rules and highlighted things they would do the Muggle way - like regular showers; and towels with hooks on the wall to hang them to dry; and heating systems; and the way you could turn down your bed by simply lifting the bed sheet and comforter and pulling them. Draco put his travel bag on the desk in the room, enlarged it, and went to sit on his simple bed, not sparing his sparse accommodation a glance. There wasn't much to see. His bed wasn't even a four-poster; there was not enough space in his room. Everything was clinically white, not a splotch of colour.

Before Draco could make any comparisons with what he had seen of Azkaban the one time he had been allowed visitation to tell his father, "Good-bye," Mr. Diggle appeared in the doorway, asking in his chipper voice, "Everything alright, Mr. Malfoy? Do you have everything you need for the night? A snack, your essentials?"

Draco didn't even deign to make eye contact or a give verbal reply; he simply nodded without looking up.

"Well, then, give me your wand, please."

Draco looked at the Alder wand in his hands. It was still new for him and he hadn't quite adjusted to its new powers yet, which was one of the reasons he hadn't made his alliance known with the Death Eaters at large. His Hawthorne wand had never returned to him and, while he had been able to get another one, their family influence was so diminished that he had to make do with what was available. And that wasn't much. Ollivander was still weak after his time in captivity at Malfoy Manor, and, while his not inconsiderable stock of wands, or what was left of it, had been returned to him, he had been less than enthusiastic at the prospect of working for the family that had imprisoned him. Narcissa Malfoy had paid an exorbitant amount to replace Draco's wand.

Stumbling upon the wand of Draco's great-great-grandfather Septus Septimius Malfoy when sifting through the destruction of the Manor, left by pillagers in the wake of the Final Battle, she had pleaded with Ollivander to merely cleanse and rebalance the dragon heartstring core of the wand, thus, making it usable for her only son. Ollivander hadn't been able to withstand a mother's desperation.

His great-great-grandfather had been rather incongruous with the natures and proclivities of his lineage and had not contributed much good to the family's standing, despite his influence as the head of Minister Unctuous Osbert's Privy Council and his perceived role as the i _de facto /i_leader of the government. Septus, it was told, only to other Malfoys safe within the Manor walls, was a bit of an anomaly among Malfoys; prone to corruption, yes, just as his father had taught him, but entirely unwilling to embrace the Dark Arts to achieve his ends; thus, rendering him unable to fully master the Malfoy wand he had received from his father. Instead, the parasitic wand, tainted by generations of Dark Magic, slowly diminished his magic and his mind. Therefore, at the height of his success as the Minister's puppeteer, the family found it prudent to remove Septus from public machinations.

To explain Septus' disappearance from the public eye at the prime of his life, aged 55, in 1798, the family concocted a story of a malicious assassination attempt on the Minister late at night, when the Minister and his trusted advisor were alone in the Minister's private office. Septus had narrowly averted the Minister's demise by heroically throwing himself in the path of the oncoming spell. Draco shook his head at the stupidity of people believing anything if you just made it sound heroic enough. As if any Malfoy would ever save anyone but himself. It would have been more plausible if Septus Malfoy had used the Minister as a shield from the attacker.

The way the story continued, Septus was, allegedly, hit with a modified, therefore incurable, Confundus, and the Malfoy family had enough blackmail information on Osbert to ensure his compliance with this public story. Septus survived another 5 years within the Manor walls, never seeing the outside again.

The wand passed to Septus' son, Lucien, who quickly disbanded with the Malfoy tradition of taking up the father's wand, banished it the dark recesses of the attic, and established the rule of choosing one's own wand henceforth. Possessing a sturdy Ebony wand with Basilisk skin core, 12 and a half inches, he rebuilt the Malfoy political influence, established the Malfoy industrial empire, and restored the association of the family with cunning, malice, and the Dark Arts. Lucien eventually retired to the French countryside leaving the Malfoy business and the wand to his son Abraxas. Abraxas Malfoy, like his father before him and his son, Lucius, after him, continued to increase the Malfoy fortune with a wand of his choosing. Abraxas used his dominating, rigid Black Walnut wand, 11 and ¾ inches, with an Acromantula web core (Publicly believed to be the heartstring of a rare Siberian Silversnout, explaining the rather grey colouring of the core, should anyone bother to look), in tandem with considerable cleverness and ruthlessness, to great effect, before succumbing to a particularly virulent case of dragon pox at the age of 98.

His wand was added to the extensive collection of Malfoy family wands that were stored in a chest at the Manor and protected by numerous wards and enchantments. These wands were made available for family use, should it become necessary to take up a new wand as had been the case for Lucius, following the first war. (After all, how would you claim innocence of having cast Avada Kedavra curses when your wand clearly indicates that it has been doing exactly that and to whom?)

It may have been traditional, an honour even, to adopt one of the heirloom wands out of necessity; however, in light of the history of the wand that was, until recently, believed lost or destroyed, and the family's recent fall from grace, Draco had been justifiably unenthusiastic about taking the inflexible and, at 13 inches, rather long Alder wand. Further increasing his reluctance to embrace the wand was a long-standing family belief that a sliver of Chimera scale comprised the heart of the core and that the volatile wand's influence had driven Septus into an early grave.

However, the Alder wand had chosen Draco after its reconstruction with an expectant shiver and a homely wave of warmth spreading up Draco's arm when he first held it, and now he felt a sting that he had to part with it. He gave it one gentle stroke, resulting in a spark of white stars shooting from it, before he handed it to Mr Diggle, again without looking at him.

Draco, therefore, didn't see the understanding smile on Diggle's face, and he was impervious to his firm, yet kind and somewhat sad tone of voice when Diggle said, "I'll lock you in. We'll see you in the morning. Rest well, there will be lots of work to do," before he closed the door.

When his door fell shut with a final thud and click, Draco couldn't resist staring at the inside of it. It was also white, a smooth surface with no blemishes, nothing to keep your glance from gliding off like butter in the sun.

Paired with the woeful coo of a dove somewhere out in the moors that surrounded the house, Draco felt this oppressive whiteness grow until it could swallow him whole. He shook his head to rid himself of the mental intrusion.

Before he could drive himself mad staring at this overwhelming whiteness, Draco got up to sort his stuff into the bathroom. In his small stall, which contained a shower, a sink, and a toilet with a small window above it, he finally felt alone, but not alone enough. Constant paranoia while living under the Dark Lord's rule, and at times with him and his court in the Manor, led Draco to feel as though he could never, ever let his guard down.

He couldn't sense any magic, and having grown up in a magical home and being a magical being used to feeling the thrum of magic in the air around him and in his blood, the absence of that energy made him decidedly unsettled, but he wouldn't trust Potter and Granger any more than he would use a wand with Kelpie hair for a core to not install any Muggle technology to spy on the inmates. He certainly wouldn't put it past them. There, he said it, they were inmates, weren't they? Criminals in the eyes of the victors and their government.

Even while he believed that he might be truly alone for the first time in years, where not even House-elves could get to him- the Ministry had most certainly put a guard in place that prevented even House-elf Apparation around the house- he still took care to make it appear that he dropped his soap and bumped his head when coming up, as an excuse for his cry of pain when he punched the wall under the sink in anger.

Looking at himself in the mirror, he let out a string of curses that would have his mother washing his mouth with soap, even at his age. He hit the basin with his fist, cursing it loudly, and then breathed hard, to breathe away the pain that threatened to chase tears in his eyes, the buggers. Malfoys don't cry, not really. Right?

Right.

Not in open daylight at least.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

"What's the problem with Malfoy?"

Ron played idly with Hermione's hand, threading their fingers together and taking them apart again, while posing the question openly to the room. His father answered. "Well, some people, like Susan Bones, have explicitly said they would take anybody but Draco Malfoy, and others are simply not a good match. We have to be very deliberate where he is concerned. He's the most influential of them all, but also the most sensitive case. He's been through a lot, as I'm sure you know, Ron."

Ron's grip on Hermione's hand contracted suddenly. "Like us, you mean?" he said with a grimace.

Hermione squeezed back, and then extracted her hand before Ron squashed it in annoyance. She offered a wan smile, hoping Ron wouldn't feel rebuked or as though she didn't want to hold his hand. She did. She wanted all of him - wanted to laugh and to cuddle with him, to feel his flesh and strength, to seek his warmth and comfort and oblivion. All of which was in short supply these days, not only from Ron, and not only for her, but from everybody and everywhere.

She didn't like to be reminded of everything _they _had experienced. They had _all _been through a lot, but compared to the others - aside from Harry, who had been willing to suffer the ultimate sacrifice - Hermione felt her straw had been particularly short. That was a road best not travelled in present company, though. Whenever she thought about, or was reminded of, her brief "stay" at Malfoy Manor, Hermione needed to be very much alone. Holding yourself together when all you want is to cry like a baby took so much effort, Hermione was uncertain how much longer she would have the strength for it.

Luckily, the focus was not on her at the moment. Arthur Weasley squeezed the shoulder of his youngest son who was, by now, a head taller. "With the difference that you were prepared for what you were about to do, yes." Hermione was too tired and too occupied with quelling the onset of tears to rectify Arthur's mistaken assumption.

"Well, if nobody wants to take on Malfoy, I guess I have to, don't I?" Harry grumbled.

"No, Harry." Kingsley intervened, stretching out in his Ministerial chair behind his desk. They had returned to his office after the introductions at the "den". The issue with Malfoy needed further discussion, and quickly. The people present were the only ones Kingsley trusted with this, apart from Minerva, who was busy with the Death Eater offspring this evening.

"You are needed as the saviour who raises the spirit. You have to go from place to place and raise morale. We will send the holograms to most places, and we'll post billboards of you as well, but you have to appear in person, too. If you go to a different place every day, people will know that you are making your rounds and that you will eventually get to them. They have to believe that they are important enough to be spoken to by you. You have to tell them about your own struggles and that you overcame them through sacrifice, hard work, and the support of your friends. Emphasize your parents, your upbringing – all the losses and disadvantages you faced. You have to put their suffering into perspective and show them that it will get better, now that Voldemort is gone."

"I still don't see how it will help when I tell everybody about my aunt and uncle," Harry muttered under his breath.

Arthur gave him an encouraging smile. "Not your aunt and uncle in particular, Harry. We don't want to raise any Muggle hate because your relatives were, or rather, are less than understanding of our world. Tell everybody about the way you grew up and the way things can be done without magic. Ekel-, elte-" Arthur Weasley huffed and then gave it a last try. "_Elec_tricity is a fascinating thing, and the ways Muggles have found to accommodate nature to their needs are ingenious. We have to use this."

"Alright." Harry agreed with a sigh. "Can I take Ginny with me?"

Arthur hesitated for a moment. "Let me think about it, Harry."

"Okay." Harry consented with a nod, aware that Ginny would likely be needed to take care of her mother and, during these tumultuous times, that Arthur was reluctant to allow Ginny too far from the safety of home. "Who will take Malfoy then?"

Ron straightened up, grumbling. "Well, if Harry can't take him, I guess _I_ have to."

It only took a split-second for everyone to react. Where Harry, Arthur and Kingsley winced and grimaced, Hermione voiced her objections, albeit cautiously. "Ron, that's a recipe for disaster. We may as well put Malfoy into Azkaban right away because he will never work with you on anything," she said quietly.

"Oh, yeah? Well, perhaps if I'm making the sacrifice to see his ugly mug every day next to me, he can make one, too, don't you think?" Ron bit back, clearly miffed.

Hermione tried to reason with him. "He wouldn't, Ron, and you know it. He feels wronged. His father was very close to Voldemort, he feels entitled to something better. I'm not saying he's right in this thinking," she continued quickly when Ron took a deep breath and his face became visibly redder, "but you know how he is. He thinks he's the highest-ranking of them all, and therefore, he has the most to lose when losing face. He will fight tooth and nail to be able to keep his standard. And he's been on the _inside__. _He knows how arbitrary some of Voldemort's rules and preferences were. If he sees the same thing from us, if we pull ranks, he will openly revolt."

Hermione exhaled forcefully. The impact of what they were about to do rested heavily on her shoulders, even if she wasn't carrying the responsibility. The entire undertaking of separating the Death Eater offspring from society for re-education could go so wrong, she felt sick thinking about it. Ron didn't like her defence of Malfoy one bit, she saw in his face, but she had to make him see their responsibility as handlers -even if it drove a wedge between them.

"Additionally, Draco doesn't see that _he_ did anything wrong. He feels entitled to special treatment. Now, he gets no respite from us. He will revolt, and you and he are volatile at the best of times. You would snap at the slightest provocation, you know that, too. It would never work," she finished with a pleading glance at Ron's angry face.

Harry agreed, albeit reluctantly. "Ron, I hate to say this, but Hermione's right. You and Malfoy _are_ a disaster waiting to happen.

Arthur added with a sigh, "I'm sorry to say, I've done my share of disliking the Malfoys. Lucius and I have never been on friendly terms, even before their involvement in the first war, and Ron, you've likely acquired some of my animosity along with your own experiences. Even as a mature adult, cooperating with Lucius would never work for me, and you and Draco would be an explosive combination in the same way."

"Who then? Who could take on Malfoy, control him, but not exploit him?" Kingsley asked impatiently. It was getting late, and tomorrow was going to be another full day.

Silence was his only reply, until …

"Ah well," Mr Weasley said. "I may as well take two. Perhaps I can undo some of the damage I've done with my attitude toward the Malfoys." He was clearly not happy about this, but there weren't many other options left.

Kingsley intervened harshly. "No, Arthur, I need you here. Ms Parkinson in your home is plenty, helping Molly. You cannot stay home and watch two compulsively reluctant young wizards and witches. Ron cannot do it, as we just decided, and Molly can't take that."

Arthur shook his head sadly. "She would, but I don't think she should."

All the while, a silent conversation between Harry and Hermione had taken place. Upon a piercing glare from Harry, Hermione shook her head angrily. When Harry tilted his head sceptically, Hermione glared back. When Harry looked imploringly, Hermione finally threw her head back in anger.

"Harry, you can't be serious," she exploded. "I'm the 'Mudblood', the insufferable know-it-all, the Muggle-born. As far as he is concerned, I know nothing about magical upbringing because I have not been there. He would never take as much as a friendly advice from me, let alone an order to dirty his hands. I would be of much better use to help with restoration projects. I could help with the Apocalypto research, work out messages-"

"But that's just it, Hermione," Kingsley interrupted her rant with sudden excitement. "Malfoy in particular needs to be put in his place, to be shown that he's not the pinnacle of creation anymore. He needs to learn that you, or anyone born outside of a pureblood union, are _not_ beneath him. Who better to show him than you? And you are not just any Muggle-born. You are our celebrity Muggle-born, our heroine. He may as well think he gets special treatment because he is assigned to our heroine."

"Kingsley," Hermione started to protest, pulling a tired grimace. Hadn't she just tried to explain the intricate psychological effects their little re-education game would have on their den-people? Being Hermione Granger, of course, she understood the intricacies, but she didn't want to be the one upholding them. Did they have any idea how difficult it would be to move Malfoy to do any kind of dirty work? How delicate the balance was going to be? How tired she was already and made even more so when she thought about extra responsibility?

No, they didn't know. Because she hadn't told them. They still saw her as their stellar friend and the brilliant Muggle-born witch who helped bring Voldemort down. They didn't know that she would leave everything behind in a blink of an eye if she could make a proper decision about where to go and how to abandon her responsibilities. She just couldn't rid herself of her duty to the world that gave her an identity. Hermione rubbed her eyebrows in fatigue.

"No, you know what, Hermione, that might really be a good idea," Harry intervened with an air of urgency, taking her cold hand into his large warm one. "You were the only one of us who didn't rise to his taunts. You _could_ manage him, and if he gives you trouble, you call on me for help. Give him a warning early on that he only has one shot. If he blows it, he goes to Azkaban, which he deserves anyway."

Hermione saw her hopes of getting out of the situation without looking suspicious and raising more questions dashed by her best friend. She _was_ known for taking on inhuman loads. Ron's anger notwithstanding, if even Harry thought it was a good idea…

"Hermione," Arthur started in as well, putting a supportive hand on her shoulder. "It may not be such a bad idea. The partnerships don't have to be forever. I'll tell you what: let's start out like this, give him fair warning and, when you see he's not complying, come to me, and we'll figure something else out. For now, time is at a premium. He has to be picked up like everybody else tomorrow morning, and I doubt we can find another proper partner for Malfoy tonight. What do you say, hm?"

Hermione looked into Arthur Weasleys clear blue eyes; the same eyes as Ron's, only with more fatherly warmth. She hadn't seen her parents in so long, and since the Final Battle, every waking minute had been spent plugging up one hole in the fabric of living or another. There hadn't been time to bring her parents back, but just now she wished there had been. She longed for her father's embrace and his reassurance that she was his girl and a jolly good one at that. She missed her mother's loving smile. All Hermione wanted in this moment was to crawl into a hot bath, wash off the grime that was war, and then crawl into bed and sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. Until the fog over her brain lifted. Until the fatigue was healed and she felt warm again.

Until then, what was one more burden?

"Alright," she said quietly. "I'll do it."

There comes a point when defending your refusal becomes more cumbersome than just taking on more work. Even though she knew she would regret this extra burden, she was too tired to fight back against the people she knew and loved. Her usually sharp mind feeling like cotton wool, Hermione knew what she wanted, but she had to get home for it.

"I'm going home. See you tomorrow."

Harry stepped up to her and embraced her. "Goodnight, Hermione. Sleep well. We'll get through it together. We will help as much as we can with Malfoy. You're doing a good thing, you know?"

"Yes, Harry, I know," Hermione answered quietly. "Good night, you all"

To a chorus of "Good night, Hermione" she turned around and left.

* * *

She left the Ministry through the visitor entrance and felt better as soon as the fresher night air hit her face. The air was so stuffy inside the Ministry, Hermione thought it had likely suffocated time as well, so that she hadn't noticed how much had passed. It was late, and since tomorrow was going to be a very full day, she had better hurry home.

Time is a curious thing, indeed, she thought on her way to the tube. If you want it to pass quickly, it moves at a snail's pace. If you need time for reflection and sanity, it runs like there's no tomorrow. You never have the right amount of it, thought Hermione, and it annoyed her greatly. It wasn't enough when she had to deal with everybody else's problems. She had taken care of Harry, and consequently Ron, ever since they started Hogwarts together, she had helped him through one of the most trying times in anybody's life.

Not that she wanted a reward for it. Goodness, no, she had done what she had to. There had been purpose in everything she had done for Harry. And it had benefited Hermione as well, of course, not to be ruled or killed by a crazy maniac who hated Muggles and Muggle-borns like herself because he couldn't get over the fact that his Muggle father had not wanted him. Although, neither had his pureblood mother.

Hermione huffed in the warm evening air. The heat of the day still clung between the walls of the buildings, driving a thin film of perspiration on her face, which only contributed to the fact that she constantly felt sweaty, dirty and worn out. But there was no time for rest. She had to prepare herself for the next day.

Hermione knew that despite being her, and therefore a straightforward example of the good guys, she was as much in danger of abusing the watched person as a more short-circuited person would be. Especially if said person was Draco Malfoy, bane of her childhood and her blooming womanhood. There was no one who had done more damage to her teenage female self-esteem, even if, in comparison, his bullying had been more along the lines of spitballs. Even though she was aware of the mechanics of what loathing another person did to her, and despite the fact that this cognition should prevent such impulsive reactions as vengeance would be, she realized that she was not infallible - especially not in her current condition.

Her rancour over Malfoy's role in this war, and his treatment of her during their school years in particular, was bound to erupt while working with him. She had deterred Ron from taking this responsibility, but she was just as much a liability when it came to Malfoy. A mature adult, someone who shared less unpleasant history with Malfoy, was much better suited for this. Only, none could be spared at the moment.

She let her wild thoughts go, just to let them out, to create the room she would have to use for restraint the next day.

How he had bullied her during school, and Harry. And Ron. Always on the lookout for ways to get them into trouble - as if they needed any help with that - always baiting Ron to snap, always riding on his family's lack of wealth. Well, where had his own wealth and upbringing gotten him, now? Nowhere, except into deep trouble, where money couldn't help at all.

With his loss of reputation, it put him almost on even footing with Ron. Only Ron was so much more than Malfoy could ever be. Brave, with a big heart, and loyal.

_Even when he left you and Harry to your grumbling stomachs? _asked her subconscious. _He came back_, snapped Hermione in her mind. _Everybody is allowed a lapse of judgment._

_Malfoy, too?_ her mind nagged.

_That is totally beside the point_, Hermione growled internally. _Besides, I love Ron._ A clench around her heart confirmed the depth of her feelings for the man who had been one of her best friends since first year and made her aware how much she ached for him. It also made her want to curse the fact that there was no time for this either. _But when we've cleaned up enough of this mess, and have recovered our senses, and stopped having nightmares and break downs and crying fits, and self-medicating we _will_ date properly._

By that time, Malfoy would have either landed himself in Azkaban because he couldn't keep his mouth shut and his unwelcome opinions to himself or knuckled under the new rule and learned to live with it. Then, she would be free to do as she pleased.

Hermione knew that the likelihood was higher for the first case. Malfoy would fight her every step of the way, and her knees almost buckled when she thought how much effort it would take to manage him. Despite her remark to Smith, she knew that the Death Eater children would not take this measure lying down. They wouldn't like it, and there would be a movement against it. She had half a mind to join it. Because she was just as angry over the circumstances they all were in. She had fought, she had sacrificed her family, her childhood, her _life _to get a life after Voldemort, and now she _still_ couldn't reap the rewards? She still had to work more to help traumatized people and these stupid Death Eater offspring to get over _their_ experiences? When was she going to get _her_ break, her time to heal?

To top it off she got Draco "Mudblood Hater" Malfoy, the one person she really couldn't stand. Oh sure, what an effect it would have if she could crush him so he would see the light.

And what was the light exactly? Working until you're dead? Sacrifice, sacrifice, and more sacrifice? Your life, your family, your freedom to walk off into the sunset and take a yearlong vacation?

Reaching this point of near desperation, Hermione decided she wasn't going to sweat it. Working with Malfoy and trying to get positive results would cost her too much energy. She would just do her assignments and tell Malfoy to do the same. If he complied, all the better. If he didn't, he would go to Azkaban, and she would be rid of him.

However, she wouldn't be Hermione Granger if she didn't think about every possible contingency. Few people knew that. They usually took her results as a given, a result of her mind-boggling time spent on research, a fact that she picked up when she read it somewhere. They didn't see how much thought she put into what she presented as a result. And so, her thoughts went beyond Malfoy's likely anger against his treatment as a representative of the losing side of the war.

Her thoughts meandered to governments and their power and its rationale. And how right it was.

That is to say, sometimes not at all.

Deep in thoughts over Kingsley's speech the previous day, and its partially volatile reception, she would have missed the two people in the dark alleyway she passed if they hadn't whispered so insistently.

"Here, take this. There's more where this came from if you need."

A relieved voice replied in a softer whisper. "Thank you. My daughter is very sick and without the Murtlap essence, we don't think she has much chance to recover quickly. Blast this no-magic rule; I'm not going to let my daughter suffer to please the Minister."

Hermione had passed the alleyway by that point, but when she heard the last part, she stopped and back stepped until she could see the two people more clearly when peering into the darkness. She briefly saw one person pat the other on the shoulder in a calming gesture but could distinguish little else about them, melted into the shadows as they were. However, they jolted into a flurry of startled movement when she said, "Excuse me -"

Two loud cracks of Apparition signalled that the two people had made off immediately. Two seconds later, before Hermione was able to continue on her way, three more cracks signalled the arrival of the No-magic police and a thrum of magic indicated the sudden establishment of a Dispellant force around the immediate area.

"Stop where you are, hold your wand arm up. Don't you dare Disapparate!" commanded a harsh voice. Hermione felt quite vividly reminded of the time the Snatchers had caught them in the Forest after Harry triggered the taboo on Voldemort's name. This time, however, she should have nothing to fear, in all honesty.

"I'm Hermione Granger. I didn't do anything. Don't stun me," she called out to the approaching wizards while she cautiously lifted both hands.

"We'll see about that. Keep your hands up, Miss."

When they had come close enough, all four relaxed as they recognised that she was indeed Hermione Granger. The unknown wizards who were dressed in dark blue robes -not unlike the Ministry maintenance workers had previously been- and had the insignia of the Office of Magical Usage Safety and Support -a large, golden OMUSS in an ellipse - applied to their chest, lowered their wands, and Hermione took a deep breath to ease the tension in her body.

"We became aware of an unregistered Apparation, Miss Granger. Did you, by any chance, see who …?"

Hermione hesitated only for a split-second, and then shook her head.

"No, I'm sorry. I can confirm two wizards but not who they were."

She hadn't recognized the wizards in any case; therefore, she wasn't able to disclose their identities. However, she hesitated to even say what they had been doing. Surely, the exchange of medical brews or potions didn't fall under the new No-magic rule and therefore, had no reason to happen underground? She had to clarify this with Harry, Kingsley, and Arthur.

The apparent leader of the OMUSS group grimaced angrily. "Alright, Miss Granger, thank you for your cooperation. Please, hurry along now, and remember – no unauthorized magic."

Hermione frowned. She was close friends with Harry Potter and close to the Minister of Magic. Surely, she didn't need reminders like this?

"I'll keep it in mind, Mr … excuse me, what was your name again?" she replied with a raised eyebrow.

As if he was guessing Hermione would cause potential difficulties with authorities, the leader grinned slyly and replied, "We are not supposed to give out our name. This is part of the new procedure and all under the new rule of the Office of Magic Usage Support and Surveillance. It's all correct, Miss Granger. Now, move along before you get caught in another icky situation."

With this, he turned and waved his team to follow, then Apparated away before Hermione could finish her offended inhalation. Did this person just threaten her and indicate that she might be caught in an illegal activity if she didn't look out? She had to have misunderstood in her befuddled state! She _really_ had to get home. She didn't feel any less angry, however.

Trudging on and steaming in righteous anger, it didn't escape Hermione that the recent war had been very black and white, with a right side and a wrong side and no middle ground.

It was entirely against rules of nature, in which only the best-adapted forms survived - those who had a little bit of this, a little bit of that - evolving to the best of both worlds.

This led her to believe that both forms of government, the current and the former, were very much artificial; as a manmade construct, of course, they were able to make up their own rules. There was no natural limit to evaluate the rules against and so, a new rule could be just as right as it could be wrong. Often, it largely depended on the law's application and enforcement. Only time would tell. Sometimes more, sometimes less time.

Of course, the people who were governed by those rules could pose limits to the laws. But what happened if you silenced a part of the people? In the best case, they simply tried to make themselves heard. In the worst case, open warfare as it just happened.

They were intricate contraptions, these governments, and when tipped out of balance, all rules had to be re-established and re-aligned. So many decisions. How far could you go to ensure that a dark wizard cannot come to power, how many people did you have to sacrifice and how, and what shouldn't you do? Is an entity allowed to mistreat people because they were on the wrong side? What if they were children at the time, does that make them blameless? If not, to what degree are they culpable? How do you control and evaluate citizens after a war?

Hermione was of course aware of the recent European history, of people spying on other people, denunciation and fear mongering, of mind and governmental control, and how close they came. It was naïve to believe they had any right to do what they did with these young adults and some minors.

What else could they do? Hermione had no better solution. Locking them up and throwing away the key wouldn't solve the problem at all.

Besides, it wasn't her place to revolutionize the government. She had done her share of fighting for what was right. All she wanted was peace and quiet nowadays. That was difficult enough.

When she got home, her time was up. Shaken up by the anger over her encounter with the No-Magic police, in addition to her regular exhausted state, Hermione was assaulted by thoughts of her torture as soon as she closed the front door behind her and shed her cloak of Hermione-Granger-the-most-powerful-witch-of-her-age. Overwhelmed by the memories of the pain from the Cruciatus curse, she slumped against the inside of her door, whimpering, breathing deeply to gain some control, and failing. Reliving the feelings of the pain tore her apart each and every time she was alone. The memories of those pureblood spectators, with their glee and superiority, who couldn't even honour dignity, added some bitter spice to the mix. Hermione felt humiliated when she thought about Bellatrix cutting into her, her blood running, her dirty blood. So did her tears, unsolicited. She hated it. She hated the fact that her parents were Muggles and that she couldn't find a stand in the Wizarding world, except if she kept working like a house-elf, showing off her magical skills, and sacrificing whatever she had left. And now she wouldn't even be able to use magic anymore, the one thing she was really good at; the one thing that proved she belonged in this world to those who doubted it. Endless desperation shrouded her view of the future in black.

She needed her potion; otherwise, there would be no way to clear her mind and to sleep at all. And whose fault was that? The whole conversation turned in circles, beginning and ending with those purebloods and with Draco Malfoy. A wave of sudden, dark anger and hate took her and shook her with the force of a gale at sea, throwing her already scrambled mind to and fro.

Oh, how the tide had turned for him. Instead of laughing and sneering down at her, he would be in her charge from now on – until she said differently. She would have control over Draco Malfoy and relish it, just like his aunt had done to her. On her command, he would go to Azkaban, and his life would be over.

The wave disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving Hermione feeling like a stranded fish gasping for air on the beach. This wasn't her. This witch vilely wanting to give into to her baser impulses of cruelty and dominate her former tormentors wasn't her. It was her wand infecting her, Bellatrix' wand, no, not Bellatrix' wand. It was her wand, and yet it was not because it was the same as Bellatrix'. Walnut, springy, twelve-and-a-half inches. It wasn't as beautifully carved as her vine wand had been, but it was neat and straight and smooth and warm. A beautiful, rich brown gave it the appearance of a valuable antique and, if it hadn't been made from precisely the same wood as Bellatrix' wand, it would have looked just the right wand for a grown-up, elegant witch who likes her notes and her life orderly -preferably sorted in a colour system. With the taint of the Bellatrix association, however, it felt right and wrong at the same time. How could it have chosen her?

Hermione shook her muddled head. Sleep, she needed sleep.

Making her way into the kitchen of her parents' house, which she had bought back in an attempt to find normality and sanctuary, she found the bottle with the Dreamless Sleep potion on the counter. It would help her through another night and sustain her wits the next day when she took Draco Malfoy to their first task.

It wasn't just a punishment for him. It was necessary assistance, but it didn't make the work any less gruesome. Without magic, their assignments would ensure that they would get dirty. Draco Malfoy would have to dirty his hands, and Hermione couldn't suppress a vindictive grin. It would do him good, for certain, and build his character if he had to buckle down for other people's needs once or twice. There would be plenty opportunity to walk waist deep in mud, she would make sure of it, and then Malfoy would see how the matter of mud got stuck on you.

How angry Draco was going to be when he found out tomorrow. Hermione didn't quite know how to feel about it. A chuckle escaped her when she imagined his shocked face, but all in all she rather felt like crying. However, that was nothing new and Hermione swallowed a healthy dose of the potion to help her sleep. Just in case. At the very least, it would slow down her excessive thinking. Slowly she made her way to her bed in her childhood room upstairs.

What would happen when Draco found out, she wondered while changing. And he would.

_You really _are _no different from me._

With this last thought, and before the fear of Malfoy disclosing her secret swallowed her whole, the draught took effect, emptied her mind, and Hermione passed out.

* * *

_P.S. Sound track for Hermione is OneRepublic "Love runs out". More action in the next chapter_


	4. Chapter 4

_Apologies for the delay. It's taking longer than I anticipated. Mccargi and I had a tricky plot twist to crack, plus RL and such. Rest assured that I'm working exclusively on this fic, and I'll update as soon as we have a chapter ready. _

_Warning: This chapter is not for the faint of heart. If you are sensitive to blood and/or human injuries, proceed with caution. Draco is being put to the test. As soon as they reach the ward, things become explicit, and not in a sexy way. I'm a nurse, I'm no foreigner to human conditions. But you may._

_Other than that, enjoy the journey they have to take. _

River 

* * *

Chapter 4: 

The next morning, Hermione only made it out of bed because Crookshanks had been too impatient to allow his mistress to wake on her own. He had pawed her nose until she woke with a sneeze.

Looking at the time in shock, she scrambled out of bed and stumbled into the shower. She fed her cat, and Crookshanks would have to forgive her that there had been no morning schmooze. She would make it up to him at night. If she survived the day, that is.

She made it to the "den" just before everybody assembled went inside. The house for the re-education had been called the Detainee Education Niche, in short, D.E.N. Harry and Hermione had termed it the "den" and the acronym had quickly been taken on. The more politically correct "detainees", had quickly become the den-people. They were i_not_ /iprisoners after all, but the difference was a bit tricky to explain.

She had slept like a rock for a solid eight hours, and yet, she did not really feel refreshed. To make matters worse, her superficial hygiene routine - due to the lack of time and the fact that she would have to spend the day with a horrid Draco Malfoy - made her feel a little frazzled at the edges. Hermione tried to pull herself together while watching the group being called to pairs before walking off – she was known, after all, for her power of mind - but it was futile. Finally, only Malfoy was left, leaning against the back wall like a casual bystander, as if he didn't have a care in the world.

When she stepped forward, waiting for her name to be called like a death sentence, Malfoy realized she was the only person left to be paired and let out a bark of laughter.

"Granger? Truly? Is this supposed to be an extra punishment or a joke? I expected Potter himself to take me on."

"Malfoy." Harry barked a quick warning, but Hermione quieted him with a raised hand. The fact that Malfoy laughed over her being a possible pushover made her oddly calm, in spite of her previous frazzled nerves. He should know better. He had, of course, been there when Hermione was tortured by his aunt - and survived with her mental capacities intact, against all odds. He would learn the stuff she was made of.

"A joke, Malfoy?" she reproached him quietly while taking another step forward. "I will take you to St. Mungo's today and tomorrow. There's a special ward, just opened, for the people who suffered from the war. You can ask them if they think it's a joke. Then you can judge for yourself."

Despite all the recent bravado, Draco's face fell like an electrocuted pig. What was left was a stiff mask of loathing. Hermione took it for what it was and nodded. "Yeah, I don't feel much like laughing either these days."

She turned and walked from the room, expecting Malfoy to follow her. Harry stretched his hand out, grazing her shoulder in passing. Her only response was to pat his hand twice without breaking stride. Seeing, and loathing, this testimony of wordless understanding between two of the Golden Trio, Malfoy pushed away from the wall and stalked past Harry without paying him any attention. Not that Potter even noticed because he stared worriedly after Granger. Draco wondered if Potter anticipated particular difficulties when it came to him, Draco, and he considered further whether he should prove him right or wrong. However, at this point, Draco kept his gaze straight and followed Hermione out of the house. He knew he had no choice in the matter. He didn't even have an audience to draw attention to his situation because everyone, even the Ministry officials overseeing the other pairs, had already left. Thus, it made no sense to argue or put up a fuss. He could find an easier target for the raging anger inside.

While walking from the house, toward the deserted street, Hermione contemplated how to lay down the rules. Before she could say a word, however, Malfoy's taunts caught up with her.

"You look like death on socks, Granger. Brown ones. They don't go well with the scythe. Clashing colours, you know? What could possibly be the matter? Did the weasel not rise to his duty and cheer you up before you left?" After a small pause and before Hermione could make any reply that would remotely make sense without seeming petty, he finished with a flourish. "Well, come to think if it, brown does go well with your nest of hair."

That did it. "Shut up, Malfoy. Nobody asked for your opinion."

He chuckled. "Defensive, are we?"

Hermione turned on him. "Do you want to shut up or do you want to i_walk_ /iall the way to St. Mungo's? Because there's no way that anyone will let you Apparate on your own."

The angry clench of his jaws at the reminder that he couldn't use magic anymore and that he was in no position to argue with his handler was enough for Hermione to get a word in. She smiled grimly when she saw this realization on his face. To have the upper hand over Malfoy for once was oddly satisfying.

That is until he shocked her out of her newfound place of comfort with an uncomfortable question.

He was eyeing the wand in her hand with barely hidden anger, and when she saw the sudden light of recognition she dreaded the next words she saw coming. And there it went.

"Nice wand, Granger. Is it new? It looks familiar."

She exhaled forcefully, trying to blow off the tension that had built with the anticipation, to no avail. "Yes, it's new. Imagine that, the Snatcher who stole my wand never gave it back," she answered as quickly and as flippantly as she could to divert him from asking more questions.

With a sly gleam in his eyes and a poorly suppressed sneer, he pushed on, despite her diversion. "New or new to you?"

She'd known it. These were exactly the difficulties she had anticipated with Malfoy. His keen observation of everything uncomfortable in his opponent, which had served him so well when making difficulties for them at Hogwarts, was exactly what she feared the most about him. However, stupid questions were no reasons to be sent to Azkaban.

Gathering all her will power to focus, she said decidedly, with a tone that brooked no retort, "It's mine."

Despite her best efforts, she couldn't proudly tell him it was new, yes, it was Walnut, _and_ it was hers because she hadn't quite _made_ it hers yet. While Mr. Ollivander had been so kind to secure her a new wand and this springy walnut wand had decidedly chosen her, she missed her vine wand too much to readily accept a new one. She couldn't bring herself to tolerate the same kind of wand that had caused her so many difficulties when it belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange; a brilliant wand for a brilliant witch, even if the core - surprisingly enough, her wand contained a phoenix feather - was decidedly different from Bellatrix'. Hermione felt the hot-blooded fanaticism and ice-cold madness that shone from the eyes of Voldemort's deceased first lieutenant too close to her own muddled mind to be comfortable. Currently unable to use the clear thinking and steadfast logic she was lauded for, she felt blind in a world of new colours at the best of times, and completely disoriented and pining for her potion at the worst.

She saw in Malfoy's glance that her nervousness and insecurity shone through and that he was puzzled over the reasons. She saw the unspoken question in his eyes, was she still using his aunt's wand, and his doubt that Hermione had the chops to make it properly work for her.

Before he could ask another question she could not prevent by throwing him into prison, she harshly commanded, "I will take you by side-along Apparation, Malfoy, so, prepare yourself." When she turned to him, their height difference became apparent: she had to crane her neck to look him in the eyes.

The strain in her neck reminded her of how much strength it would take to always be one step ahead of Malfoy. While she had diverted his obnoxiousness this time, the next time was surely not far behind. It wasn't that he was unpredictable in his actions, by Golly, no. However, he was clever, and Hermione knew that she would never shut him up if she countered his justified whinging with the blunt threat of punishment. She had to outsmart him, divert him, and make him see where he was wrong and whati _he_ /icould do to make it right. The anticipation of this kind of effort almost made her eyes droop in exhaustion.

She just didn't want to put up with this waste of energy. There were so many things to be done, more important things, and she simply didn't have a limitless amount of strength. Shaking herself out of her racing, turning thoughts, she remembered that she would be able to put a stop to it in her power position. There was still the threat of Azkaban. If he refused to stop his constant and grating protesting and whining after several reprimands, who was to stop her from inventing a reason to get rid of him? Arthur had said these pairings didn't have to be forever.

One step at a time, Hermione, she admonished herself. She just had to survive until tonight. There was more potion and sleep and oblivion for a night. Just get through to tonight when you can close your door on it all.

Ignoring her fatigue, she took a deep breath and continued in a calm voice that belied her inner turmoil. "I will only say this once, so consider it your warning. We all have to give you one. Don't even try to do anything stupid. You'll be carried off to Azkaban faster than my bruises will heal. We expect you to give a helping hand with the tidying up. If you do well enough, you will be considered a free man at the end of your assessment period. How long that takes depends on how well you do. You are not a prisoner, but you are under observation. We need to know how far we can trust you not to start another purebloods-for-president campaign. After all, _your_ lot is responsible for the mess we are all in. Do you understand?"

Malfoy bit his lip and clenched his jaw again. There was something inexplicably flustered in Granger's demeanour, which made no sense, unless she actually feared him, Draco Malfoy. Try as he might, he could see no reason for that. He was in her hands, in fact, and she had just explained to him that she had the power to lock him away for good if he merely _looked_ at her wrong.

On the other hand, despite his earlier blustering, Draco was quite relieved to know that Granger, given her general principles, was in fact the least likely person to abuse such power. If the fates had put him together with, say, Zacharias Smith Draco would have been fucked. Perhaps even literally, he didn't know what that family was capable of, and he would be without any means of retribution. He was, therefore, quite grateful, to have Granger as a handler, even if he would never admit that, not even to himself.

Further, Muggle-born or not, there was no use denying that Granger was a powerful witch. For surely, if anybody could ensure his safety under the circumstances it was her, connected as she was with the highest places in the government, namely Harry Potter and his supporters. Despite her inferior height and birth, and quite contrary to her momentary flustered appearance, he knew her to possess a steely resolve, stemming from a powerful magical constitution and guided by unwavering principles.

And she had a _wand_! She possessed something that was denied him, the Malfoy heir, and the scion of generations of powerful purebloods who had carried the history of their wizarding world on their responsible shoulders. Despite knowing his situation could have been much worse, Draco felt a startling wave of fury assaulting him, heating him up from the inside. The very presence of, let alone a physical response to, such an emotion was a foreign concept. It contradicted everything he'd been taught since infancy about cool loathing and calculation being the tools of the ambitious and successful pureblood achiever. Even Aunt Bella's fanaticism had been an exception.

As he struggled with the simmering resentment that threatened to overwhelm him, Draco found himself caught in her burning eyes and unnerved at her closeness. Torn between the compulsive want to strangle her, an overload of emotions that was quite unusual, and the knowledge that such a loss of control would mean an indeterminate Azkaban stay, he felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was all too familiar with the feeling of being trapped and it only stoked his burning hate for the establishment all the more.

In situations like this, the most reasonable thing to do was to turn to his engrained ideology, which stood out like a beacon in the night and shone on the well-trodden paths that gave so much comfort to his troubled mind because of their familiarity. He was stuck taking orders from a Mudblood, while she witnessed his humiliation at the government's refusal of his rights as a pureblood to lead a life of privilege in _his_ world, not hers - everything was wrong, so wrong. When all felt lost, there they were, his learned prejudices rising to the surface, like Hinkypunks in the bog, showing the way.

His gaze expressed all the loathing that his situation in general and her person, as a representative of his current suppressor, in particular warranted when he finally asked, "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"No," Granger replied calmly, fixing him with a glare. "Not stupid, just stubborn." Then she stretched out her arm in her typical bossy way for him to hold onto and raised her wand.

Draco looked at the thin magical stick with envy and more loathing, but there was nothing for it. He had to take her arm if he didn't want to go to Azkaban. He swallowed his last scrap of dignity before grabbing her arm and letting the magic take him away.

* * *

DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG

* * *

When they arrived at the magically expanded fourth floor of St. Mungo's, the Albus Dumbledore Ward for Severe War Damages, Draco thought Granger had tricked him and landed him right in the middle of a battlefield to finish him off. If they hadn't been greeted by a life-size poster of Potter in the entrance area, his wand hand raised in a fist and a glorious smile on his face, he would have sought cover immediately.

Nonetheless, Draco raised his hand automatically, uselessly, for protection until he realized that he wouldn't need help here – and that he had no wand to hold. Making a fist with his empty hand, he remembered the screams and the smell of blood so well. The dust and the darkness were missing, but other than that, he felt himself pull his shoulders up automatically against the amount of abhorrent noises assaulting him.

"Damages from dark curses are particularly painful and most difficult to heal. Even though it would be safe to use some magic within the rooms of St. Mungo's, by express permission of the Minister, the injuries do not allow the application of magic. We cannot close wounds magically when they have been opened by dark magic. We can brew many potions, but we can rarely use them here." Granger gave him the run-down quickly, the same way she answered teachers' questions; although, Draco had a difficult time hearing her over the blaring of human suffering. He read her lips more than he heard. Or perhaps he didn't i_want_ /ito hear.

"I can put an ear plug charm on your ears or you'll go mad within hours. All the healers do," Granger supplied in a way that she surely considered to be helpful. However, Draco wanted nothing to do with the whole scenario - the screaming, the moaning, the stench of rotting flesh, of blood, of human excrements. Frozen in the horrible tableau of injured and agonizing fellow wizards and witches, children and adults alike, Draco noticed the empty smiling faces of the healers running around, trying to soothe, to calm, to heal.

He felt crushed. Different from the challenge of staying in the good graces of the Dark Lord, finding the right amount of straightforwardness and illusion to deceive Lord Voldemort into believing that you were his most loyal servant and more valued than the rest, this collection of wizarding tragedy made Draco want to flee. He couldn't imagine himself running around like the healers, trying to i_help_ /ithese poor buggers. A picture of Draco Malfoy with an empty smile holding the hands of an old codger who was slowly bleeding out simply didn't fit into Draco's view of the world. Every fibre in his body screamed "NO!"

"What makes you think I would touch any of them?" Draco asked when he could muster enough air to breathe. It sounded a little forced, even to his own ears.

Hermione simply looked at him. He was startled to see her usual fight, that fierce glance he had just received before Apparating, extinguished from her eyes. A dull brown where usually warm, milk chocolate with a spark greeted him - a view he liked, though he would _never_ admit it to anyone - made her look a hundred years old, and Draco wondered if it had something to do with the fact that she had been in this ward before. "Because you'll hear your fellow prisoners cry in Azkaban if you don't," she replied coldly. "I'll give you five minutes to adjust. Then come find me, and I'll tell you what we can do."

He crossed his arms over his chest, the very picture of a person immune to other people crying for help, but his eyes darted around nervously.

"And smile," she admonished him. "They see enough misery already." With that, she hitched up her face and pulled it into a beatific mask of benevolent happiness – the very picture of the glorious heroine who aided Potter in victory. The difference was night and day from the scowling Granger from before, and it took a perplexed Draco took a minute to gather his senses before he could follow her.

In the end, he couldn't stand the terror of watching those injured people turn in their beds in pain. He had to move, but just running around between the beds felt stupid, and a Malfoy was not stupid.

* * *

DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG

* * *

The rest of the day went by in a blur.

However, in the middle of it, a gong sounded so loud that everyone paused immediately and turned to the source. A moment later the air shimmered in the middle of the ward and before anybody could make the association to the shimmering air of Voldemort's legacy, Harry Potter materialized to loud collective gasps of "Harry Potter!" and "Harry Potter came to see us!"

"Please stay calm." Draco heard Granger's clear voice in Sonorus raised over the dim. "This is only a very realistic picture of Harry Potter. It is called a Patrogram and it's a life-sized image paired with a Patronus charm. As you've been told, we will get to see it every day from now on because Harry cannot come to see each one of you every day. He will, eventually, but not today. Now, listen to his message."

On second sight, it became very clear that the mirage wasn't the real Potter. However, he stood as if present in the middle of the room and looked around, and even the ones who moaned the loudest in pain held their breath. Then, with a nod, he spoke.

"My fellow wizards and witches, my name is Harry Potter, and I defeated Voldemort. I know I should have done so a lot earlier, and I cannot apologize enough that I needed the time that it took me. If I had been quicker and followed the good advice given to me more closely, I could have prevented many deaths and much suffering. I am sorry." At this point, Harry lowered his head and his shoulders slumped, displaying the very picture of a young man who had a life sentence to carry, a burden he would never lose. An outcry went through the ward.

"Harry Potter, no …"

"You saved us; he would have killed us all …"

"Our saviour…"

"Oh, look at the lad. Isn't he fine?" The remonstrance sounded from all sides. Draco felt like throwing up at the obvious worshipping of the Holy Potter. Before he could give room to his visceral feelings, he saw Granger standing a few feet away from him, observing the image of her best friend with calculating calmness. Draco knew that expression of hers. He'd seen it many times. It was the same one she wore when Draco and the weasel got into a tussle, and she puzzled over how to break it up with a well-thrown remark that would stop Draco in his tracks. Draco didn't like that expression at all; usually, it didn't bode well for him, but in this moment, at least, it told him that Granger hadn't taken leave of her critical thinking with regards to the new government initiatives.

Just then, Potter carried on. "Please stop wincing at his name. He is dead, and Albus Dumbledore, who was the greatest wizard of all time, told me once, fear of a name only increases fear of the person. He wasn't the perfect advisor, but he was the best for me.

"You all know my story: how Voldemort killed my parents and how I came to live without any magic for the next ten years. When I got my letter to Hogwarts," a few people cheered at this point, "knowing I was a wizard was like a miracle to me. Being magical, I knew I was special."

Harry's Patrogram paused. Draco could barely suppress a snort. He was sure that the crowd, listening with bated breath, wouldn't have appreciated a disparaging noise. Besides, he knew what almost happened to Pansy's father. He wouldn't put it beyond these cripples to try to throw human detritus at him. Ewww.

'Harry' continued. "We are all special with our magic. Each and every one of us; you, me, and your next-door neighbour. Magic is a terrible and wonderful thing. It is wonderful because it makes many things so easy. Just a swish of your wand and your house rebuilds itself. Just a tap and your dinner cooks on its own. Just a potion and all your pains and aches are healed. But…" 'Harry' waited for an ominous second.

"It is also terrible, because in the wrong hands it can create spells that destroy. We have the Unforgivables and a slew of other spells and curses intending to do harm to our fellows. That is exactly the situation we are in, at the moment. Voldemort and his followers left a legacy that makes the use of magic very dangerous. The Apocalypto curse!" Affirmative cries and wails reverberated through the ward, followed by the hush of the ones who weren't in mortal pain.

'Harry' carried on in his grave voice. "We don't know how it works yet, only that it prohibits the use of any other magic once the curse is applied. The consequences are horrible." At this point, 'Harry' looked like his best friend had died, and it had the required effect. Everybody in the ward either gasped or nodded sagely.

"Take a look at it and join me in seeing how horrible it is!" Harry's voice intonated when the image changed to shimmering air hovering over a field. To Draco it looked like waves of energy one sees in the summer heat. Thus, he was quite scandalized and alienated when he noted people's angry and vicious reactions. The same people who had just suffered greatly and loudly were now able to raise themselves in their beds to hiss and shout and curse at the image in the middle of the room. A quick glance at Granger confirmed that she hadn't known about this. The shock on her face showed clearly that the people's reaction upset her most because it caught her completely unawares.

After a minute, 'Harry' went on with a grim expression of determination. "The whole Department of Mysteries and half of the Ministry staff are working on how to dissemble this terrible magic. I therefore ask you, my fellow wizards and witches, to bear with me and to stop using magic until we've found the solution. I know it will be very hard to step back from our specialty. For many of you who have grown up with magic, this seems unfathomable, but those of us who have been brought up by Muggles, or are related to Muggles, know it's not impossible. We have to work together. I am working together with the Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, who has ordered every person available to help with this undertaking. I will give you updates this way every day. Our Minister, who has only your welfare in mind, has decided that we will give you lessons on how to live without magic every day by Patronus-hologram, i.e. Patrogram as well."

With a deep breath, 'Harry' went onto the finishing line. At least, Draco hoped he was getting to the end of this sermon. "Remember, we all have to work together to rebuild our country after the war against Voldemort. Every helping hand will contribute. Please, join me now in listening to my dear friends and fellow Order of the Phoenix members, Dedalus Diggle, as he explains the use of towels instead of drying spells, and Minerva McGonagall as she demonstrates how to light a fire with matches."

With his last word, 'Harry' made a small bow of respect to the sufferers from the war, and then the image changed to the small man with his hat askew, who looked positively excited to be able to explain the use of towels.

"Fellow wizards and witches, you all know what a towel is, and you all know what a shower is. I know, I know, some of you skip showering altogether and use a Scourgify charm when pressed for time, but that is one thing we _must _resist doing, my dear friends. Use the showers every day or use plain water and soap to clean yourself, and then rub yourself off with the towels. It works just as well and is a lot softer than a spell. It won't make your hair stand on end the way our magic does." At this point, he winked at his viewers and pushed his hat a little further up without any lasting effect. It slipped right back down. He continued untroubled.

"Afterward you hang the wet towel on a hook in the wall, and the next time you want to clean yourself it is ready to use. This is all very easy, once you get used to it. Tomorrow, I will explain to you how to cover a wound with bandages and disinfectant." He preened with unadulterated joy.

"I'm giving over to the esteemed Minerva McGonagall. She will explain how to light a fire using matches."

The image changed to the Headmistress of Hogwarts who looked her usual commandeering self. She sent a stern look over the top of her glasses and set off.

"Thank you, Dedalus. Dear wizards and witches, as much as it pains me to say this, we must resist using magic at this time. I will now explain to you how to light a fire with the matches you've been sent. Each family has received a box of matches by owl this morning. Please keep it out of the hands of children as lighting a match has consequences, not only in setting fire to beds but also in burning down quickly. The matches will have to last a few days until we can supply you with more."

"Now," she carried on without pause," a parchment of instructions has been delivered with the matches. Please, pile wood and paper in your fireplace as instructed in the drawing. Once you've done this, strike the coloured head of a match, using only one at a time, over the red side of the box until a flame appears. Don't be startled, it will light with a whoosh and it will be hot, so keep your fingers at the wooden end of the match. Give the flame a few seconds to settle, and only then put the ignited end of the match under the lowest point of the pile, so that a piece of paper can catch fire. If it doesn't catch on immediately, you can carefully blow some air into it. Be cautious that you don't blow it out again. Start with a soft blow, instead of a harsh puff. Once the fire is established, pay attention to the fact that the wood will burn down, and you will have to put a new log on the burning fire every hour. If you adhere to the given instructions, you should not find it difficult to light or to keep a fire going. Store the matchbox in a dry place and out of reach of your children. They have proven to delight in lighting matches without supervision and then dropping them with a start, which will lead to fire in unwelcome places and subsequent injuries."

Minerva McGonagall gave a hearty sigh. "If, however, you do encounter difficulties, please, do not hesitate to ask a fellow wizard or witch of Muggle descent to help out. If you don't know anyone, owl Dedalus, myself, or the Ministry Office of Manual Skills Education and Support for advice. We will be happy to direct you to a Muggle-born who does know for future reference.

"This is all for today. We will be back with more advice tomorrow. I bid you a good day. Stay strong. We will pull through this together." Minerva raised a clenched fist for emphasis, and was joined for a moment by Dedalus and Harry in the image, both making the same gesture. Then the image disappeared entirely, and the few people who could broke out in applause.

_Pompous arse_, Draco thought while the din of chatter due to the unexpected appearance of their saviour gave way to renewed moans and whimpers. _Of all the people who should represent our magical world it had to be this specky, Muggle-raised git,_ Draco thought with malice. _Our world is going to the dogs, with me, the Pureblood Scion wiping whiny arses and Potter being the Holy Saviour,_ he considered with a frown and a shudder before he resumed his work of the day running from one bed to the next.

Later the same day, Draco took a mental break and wandered, exploring the whole fourth floor, trying to get away, and ended up in the Janus Thickey ward. When Hermione saw him later, he was folding and unfolding a candy wrapper over and over in his hands, aligning the edges, folding and creasing, then unfolding it again to start all over at a different edge. Struck by understanding, Hermione put her hand gently over his busy ones to arrest his compulsive movement. He looked up startled, and Hermione was touched to see naked horror clouding his usually clear orbs.

Caught in this brief moment between two worlds, Draco was astounded to see that understanding was just one emotion reflected in her eyes. It was all there: disgust and blame, along with an angry compassion that made her eyes gleam like cruel hard diamonds and some softness that Draco couldn't and didn't want to place. Realizing that he stood alone with her in an empty corridor, he shivered, pulled his hands out from under hers, and put the wrapper in his pocket.

"Come on," Hermione said softly. "We have work to do."

As if a spell had been lifted, his eyes cleared and focused on where Hermione's hands had been. Then he focused on her. "Don't patronize me, Granger," he hissed. "And don't touch me like one of your friends."

Hermione pulled her hands back as if they had been burned. 

* * *

DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG

* * *

Draco was not aware if he even ate, drank, or went to the loo. He felt hollow from trying to be everywhere at once and not succeeding; hollow and exceedingly exhausted, torn between wanting to run to the screams to stop them and wanting to run far away where he would never hear them again. Even with his earplug charm, he had felt the screams reverberate in the air. More than once, he had stood elbow deep in blood trying to stem a broken valve. The worst part had been that he had to wait for somebody else to clean the blood off him because he had no wand. On top of the horror of dealing with this suffering human mess, he felt helpless as a wizard without wand - literally. He also couldn't shake the nagging feeling of guilt. The war had taken place because of Voldemort, and if nobody had supported him and his crazy ideas, most of these people wouldn't be here. He had seen the healers close a few eyes forever, and he hadn't even known the name or if they had family. The healers had taken care of the rest.

Draco saw Granger sitting with patients, just holding their hands and talking, telling them stories of how Potter and she defeated Voldemort, taking the patients' minds off things or building their resilience. He was surprised that he understood that touch and time were the best healers.

At the end of day, a little girl of maybe eight or nine stayed most vividly in his mind. She had needed help going to the loo and she had pulled on his clothes while he ran by her bed. A ricocheting spell in a Death Eater attack on an unsuspecting village had cost her an arm and a foot, and due to the dark nature of the spell Skele-grow was not an option. Granger had been nowhere to be found; therefore, Draco had to help her up, accompany her and put her back to bed. She couldn't hold herself up and wipe at the same time and so, Draco had to do it for her. He had tried to give her a smile when she thanked him, he really had. It hadn't been her fault, she was just a girl, but his smile must have been a little crooked because the girl had looked a little uncertain at his face. Draco realized that he hadn't been able to feel his face properly because his head felt ready to burst from trying to rationalize all this human misery.

Granger found him 15 minutes later in the dirty laundry pantry. If she saw his red eyes in the dark, she didn't comment on them. She just told him to get his arse back out there. 

* * *

DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG DMHG

* * *

At the end of the day, Granger Apparated him back to the den. As soon as they touched the ground, Draco let go of her arm and turned toward the house.

"Be ready tomorrow. I'll pick you up at the same time as today." He heard Granger's strained voice behind him.

In a sudden angry reaction to a world gone crazy with misery, he whirled around, went two fuming steps back and hissed, "Or what, Granger? You send me to Azkaban in my pyjamas? Been pining to look at my pureblood arse, have you? Not that I have a choice, here. After all, we are here to serve you triumphant winners of the war."

Granger eyed him coolly. "I would give you two minutes to slip into your clothes before I called on the Ministry. That would mean you would be in less than impeccable condition when facing other people. Do you want that, Malfoy? Isn't it most important to you to show how Malfoys are always so above dirt and human conditions? Cleanliness being next to godliness and all?" She chuckled darkly. "I have yet to see you with a hair out of place. It might be worth the experience to see how you look in the morning before your preening."

Draco gave her a dark look and turned back around. "I'll be ready."

He barely heard Granger say, "Good night, Malfoy," before he simply closed the door behind him with a little unnecessary force, because he felt like it.

* * *

_As usual, let me know what you think. :-)_


	5. Chapter 5

**_Aaaaand here we go. Sorry for the delay, but good story writing takes time, as you all know. Believe me, this chapter, heck the whole fic has gotten miles and leaps better for it._**

**_Apologies and enjoy!_**

Chapter 5

The door slam still ringing in his ears, Draco stalked directly to the coat cupboard turned supervisor's office in the entrance hall to retrieve his wand. Steaming in anger, he wasn't going to be separated from his magic one minute longer. His situation was bad enough as it was, thank you very much.

There was a young wizard with pustule-ridden skin sitting behind the desk. He seemed barely older than Draco himself, but Draco couldn't recall ever seeing him, either at Hogwarts or in Diagon Alley. How such a nobody came to be associated with the winning side, Draco couldn't imagine, but it hardly mattered. Draco stopped at the desk and stared down at the pimpled man until the guy raised his head at the intrusion.

"My wand," Draco snarled imperiously.

The young wizard raised an eyebrow and took hold of a ledger to his right. "Name?"

"Draco Malfoy," he huffed. "And you are?"

"Stan Shunpike," the young man said, as though it were inconsequential, while perusing the parchment in front of him. "Hm, oo's yer 'andler?"

Draco suppressed a low growl. The name sounded familiar, but he was too distracted to think on it at the moment. Furious, he tried to recall ever having been denied immediate gratification when it came to accessing magic. He had expected things to change somewhat under this initiative, specifically his captivity, but to have to wait for his wand while this perfidious pimple on legs was asking completely unnecessary questions, was trying his legendary Malfoy composure. What did the name of his "handler" have to do with his right to his wand inside this house?

"Hermione Granger," he replied in a tone that promised most uncomfortable consequences should he be forced to answer any more uncalled for questions.

That made the young wizard look up. "'ermione Granger? The war 'eroine? Best friend of 'arry Potter, iner?"

"Yes," Draco pressed out through clenched jaws.

"Well, 'ere is she? She's 'apposed ter drop ya off in'ere and sign the chuffin' daily report, like all them 'andlers. Same as she did this Day's Dawnin 'en she signed ya aahht." Shunpike's face was alight with eagerness to see the war heroine for himself. Draco was sure he would have asked for an autograph had Granger been standing next to him. Draco, however, wasn't quite sure how she would have taken that. Granger didn't seem the type who'd appreciate such nonsense. He was sure she would have lectured the pimpled man on honour and duty. At length.

Slightly amused by the thought of the less eager reception of a lengthy Granger speech, Draco forgot his anger for a minute and asked curiously, "There's a procedure for picking us up and dropping us off?"

"Aye," the young wizard said. "The Minister wants nah foul play comin' aahht of this education intervention, so, we check ya in the mornin' before ya go off and in the evenin' when ya come back, with yer 'andler. Plus, there 're intermediate reports. So, 'er whereabouts?" At the end of this lengthy explanation, the young man frowned up at Draco. Despite the height difference, him towering over the sitting man, Draco felt a little wrong-footed that his rudeness had prevented Granger coming with him.

"Erm, we didn't part on the best of terms," he mumbled. "I left her in the front-yard."

"Oh," Shunpike said disappointedly. His pimply face dropped until it was as sallow as Snape's had always been. "Well. Then. Too bad, init?"

The young man's attention shifted to a stack of galleons at the edge of the desk, which blinked innocently in the early evening light. Draco was reminded of the ingenious way Granger had arranged for Dumbledore's Army to communicate via Protean charm on the fake galleons in their fifth year. He had been quite impressed, albeit against his will, that Granger had come up with this piece of magic, which was, naturally, far above their school level. In fact, he had been so impressed that he had used the clever magic for his own purposes in sixth year. Were the handlers, as he now suspected, carrying similarly charmed galleons for communication when out with their charges? Was it possible that Granger had made such an impression on those in authority that they would use one of her ideas without looking for better options? Or had Potter pressed them to it? He would have to find out how high on the ladder she stood in the new order.

After looking for a particular galleon and checking the imprint on its side, Shunpike seemed to overcome his disappointment, blindly stretching his arm toward the shelves behind him, as he said, "'eaven and 'ell, there's always 'nother time. A'ight, since there's been no-nuthin reportin' from you today, I guess…'ere…you go."

He plucked Draco's wand from its slot and pushed it across the divide. Draco had to restrain himself from snatching it up like a thirsty man would a glass of water. Soothing warmth spread out from where his wand lay on the counter, and Draco felt a little jittery at the thought of actually taking it in hand. He picked it up slowly, deliberately, and felt the magic flow up his arm like a current as soon as he touched it.

If he had been alone, he would have allowed himself a satisfied sigh.

In light of Shunpike eyeing him curiously, he limited himself to half a nod of acceptance. He actually relaxed his stiff neck for half a centimetre and let it drop, glaring at the young supervisor for making him wait.

Shunpike, however, was impervious to Draco's mien. He just shoved a piece of parchment toward Draco and put a quill next to a line at the bottom. "Sign 'ere," he said jovially. Then he added with gravity, "Nex' time, make sure she comes in with ya."

Draco signed his name on the appointed line with the day's date, indicating that he had received his wand back, and turned with a last half nod. Only when he had closed the door of the supervisor office behind him, did he allow himself to stop. He looked up and down the hallway to ensure that it was empty and then gave his wand a hug, revelling in the euphoric feeling of having it back.

DMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHG

Draco stumbled into their den's common area a few minutes later, so exhausted he would have liked nothing better than to sink into a hot bath, after which Blinky, his house-elf, would bring him a warm dinner, despite the heat. Lamb chops perhaps, with mash and gravy, and some tender green beans sautéed in butter. There was comfort, care, and solace in a warm, home-cooked meal that no other food could ever provide.

As it was, he knew, that was out of the question. He hoped one of the girls had managed to conjure something, i_anything_ /iedible, with which he could recharge his body. Then he remembered that magic was not allowed or at least to be kept at a minimum, so the chances were also very slim for that to have happened.

Steeling his spine against the expected disappointment of lacking sustenance, there was nothing he could do for his mind, he knew. It wouldn't quiet down until he went to sleep later. Regurgitating the awful noises of the day, a blaring cacophony of anguish and the blatant propaganda of the new government, and chewing on the anger and confusion and trepidation that came with his new situation, he was aware that he would need a long time to fall asleep. He opted for distraction instead and went to the common room.

As expected, all the girls were huddled together in one corner of the common room, and the smell of food was noticeable absent in the house. Too tired to even slap two pieces of bread together for a simple sandwich, but unable to ignore his rumbling stomach, he plopped down on the couch next to Pansy, who was so focused on the other girls and fiddling with her wand in her hands that she barely registered his presence. Never liking to be ignored and unused to someone not anticipating his needs, Draco grumbled, "Would it be too much to ask that you girls fix something to eat?"

Pansy only graced him with an admonishing glance and a sneer, while rolling her wand between her palms. "You stumble in here, well behind the rest of us, and expect a meal without doing anything for it? What, just because we are witches we should, all of a sudden, know how to prepare food? We grew up with house-elves, just like you. I have no more idea how to boil water than you do, aside from potion making. Unless you'd like to supper on a Draught of Living Death …"

She snickered at his exasperated expression and freed her hands by putting her wand behind her ear. Then she added in a lower voice, just for him to hear, "However, the more practical of us, that is, the ones with some relations to Muggle-borns - as removed as they are…" she added hastily, as if to tell Malfoy that these den-people should not be disrespected just because they knew Muggle-borns. Because these fellows could mean their survival as it was clear that no help could be expected from their wardens with regards to providing meals. She urged Draco to secure his alliance with this more practical approach, which was not very pureblood-like, pleading for divergence from the rule - as though she was asking his permission. Draco wasn't aware when he had become the arbiter of all things pureblood, but he didn't mind it. It would make things so much easier if his fellows felt obliged to ask his leave.

"… they have organized a way to learn how to prepare food, lest we all starve or subsist on crisps. That would serve them too well, those winners of the war, that we starve and they be rid of us. We were all able to have some kind of breakfast, but for dinner? Ursula knows how to prepare a stew of sorts, having watched a family friend a few times, and Grogan said he secretly observed their house-elves prepare a full meal. He has arranged for the supervisors to bring a chunk of meat and vegetables with them tonight. We just have to wait for him and Ursula to come back. We will assemble in the kitchen to make it look like we are all helping. It will serve two purposes, having a decent meal and convincing the supervisors that we are actually complying and doing things the Muggle way, getting them off our backs."

Pansy used her physical proximity in an attempt to press her advantage, leaning into and all but falling on him, but Draco had already pulled back.

"Have you taken full leave of your senses, Pansy?" he asked under his breath with all the rage he could gather without turning up the volume. He wanted her to receive a full load of disgust and repulsion, but he didn't want to carry out this conversation with the whole room and everybody in it. "Are you trying to tell me that we should prepare our own food to show compliance with our oppressors? That we should give up our way of life to make nice with the same people who took our traditional wizarding life away from us, fully intending to sully it beyond recognition or repair?"

There was no way he was going to stand in the kitchen and pretend he was prepping his own dinner. There had to be some limits on what they could be reduced to by these winners of the war. So he would lose a few pounds because their keepers didn't provide them with warm meals, big deal.

Pansy winced at his harsh tone, but she didn't back down. Instead, she sat up very straight, glaring down her nose at him. He had to give her credit for her backbone, despite her traitorous ideas.

"Draco, we have to take care of ourselves or do you want to look like we live in squalor?" she implored, her anger evident in her stiff back and her equally harsh tone. "We are well-bred purebloods and we should look the part. For that, you need to eat properly and keep yourself and your belongings clean, with or without magic. We'll start the cleaning lessons tomorrow. If we begin stinking and looking like sewer rats, people will take us for sewer rats, and we lose all credibility. That certainly wouldn't be in our best interest, don't you agree? We still want a voice and we want people to hear us when we cry 'foul'. If we don't look presentable, people won't listen; or worse, they'll say we brought it on ourselves by refusing to cooperate."

Quietly, Draco seethed. He knew she was right. However, there was a difference between looking like you've been mistreated and denied all your comforts and "living in squalor". He liked to think he could negotiate a middle ground, cunning Slytherin that he was. He was going to pay them back, these winners of the war, beating them at their own game. Who were they that they could turn the world he'd known and loved on its head –making a mockery of everything that made wizarding society superior - that they could take away his innate power and make him the lowest of the social hierarchy? They couldn't do that, it wasn't right, and he would show them.

"And later, come September -" Pansy carried on, but he had enough.

"I don't intend to stay here until September, thank you very much," Draco interrupted sharply.

The gaze Pansy gave him in reply was almost pitiful. "You have no idea how long we are going to stay here. Given your attitude about showing 'improvement' I don't see you leaving first. You know me, I don't mean to lay back and let them have their way with me. We will fight them, in our own way. I am just as angry as you are, but we also have to make contingency plans. I want to survive this absurdity with my sanity intact."

So did he. And he would. However, that didn't mean he would let these winners have the satisfaction of manipulating him into becoming anything other than a Malfoy. He would rally as many like-minded people as possible to subvert this new system and return things to their natural order. Starting with his den-fellows.

Pansy put a pacifying hand on his arm and said quietly, "But we have to make them think that we play by their rules. There's no use fighting this, Draco. You know it's true."

Clenching his jaw, Draco growled back. "We'll see about that." Then, to distract Pansy from the topic, because he had to think hard before he could disclose any more of his innermost thinking, he jerked his head toward the other witches in the corner. "What's wrong with Tracey?"

Pansy gave him a last warning glare and then turned toward the girl in question. "She cracked already. Hannah Abbott … the Hufflepuff, remember?"

When Draco simply nodded his confirmation, she carried on, quietly, with her eyes firmly on the crying girl in front of her, her anger giving way to irritation over the easy win for the other side. "Well, the Hufflepuff took her to the orphanage today, and they had to take care of the kids and play with them and read them stories. You know how sensitive she is and how much Tracey likes the little ones."

Draco shook his head, even though Pansy couldn't see it. "I'll never understand how she ended up in Slytherin."

Pansy sighed and turned to face him, since Daphne Greengrass seemed to have Tracey well in her arms and was giving sufficient comfort. Further, Astoria, Daphne's sister, had one of Tracey's hands between hers, stroking it gently. "Well, she can be quite cunning if she wants something, but little babes are her one weakness. And I hate to say it, but it seems the light side exploited this to full-effect today."

Draco bent over his former girlfriend, so that only she would hear. "Do you think they knew?"

Pansy threw him a dubious look. "Do you think they were attentive enough to notice? Are they able to do things that don't involve blunt heroism and open declarations?"

"Does the moon turn blue at times?" he replied with a forced smile. Trying to joke about it, he thought at the same time that the situation could be more dire than he anticipated.

Pansy chuckled, reacting to his disarming smile without knowing the ominous thoughts behind the façade. If only he could be so clueless. It was tiresome to always be able to see people's machinations or hidden agendas and be forced to counter-strategize.

"Yeah, right. So, no, I think it was just a lucky coincidence. Lucky for them, that is. Not that Tracey ever was a tough nut to crack." With a sigh, she leaned back, scrutinizing him.

"So, who are you finally with, and what did you have to do today, Draco?"

Draco's gaze darkened at the mere thought of his handler. "Guess."

Pansy shrugged. "Don't know. Did they load you off on Potter himself? You should be flattered."

Draco snorted. "Yeah, that's what I thought at first. But no, guess again."

Pansy gave him a puzzled look. "Well, I'm with the weasel in his house to help his mother, so it can't be him. That was actually not too bad. The weasel-mother is completely out of sorts because one of her brood snuffed it." She rolled her eyes. "So, while she usually takes care of the entire household, everybody's at a loss now that she's out of commission. I had to help out with that. Of course, I refused to lift a finger." She chuckled. "Good luck with them teaching me, you know how I am with household spells."

Draco smirked. It was an open secret in Slytherin that Pansy was born to be a princess with an army of house-elves. No household spell stuck with her. That was the primary reason Draco was so shocked when she suggested making their own meals. She just refused to remember and when Pansy set her mind on something …

Instead of her usual tenacious expression, however, Pansy had a faraway look on her face. "Well, later the oldest brother came by, with his French wife. He was quite decent, asked how I was doing after what happened to Father, and if my mother was holding up." She shook her head at the memory. When she saw Draco looking at her, she blushed. "Alright, after that I helped peel the potatoes for dinner. By hand, like a Muggle. You know I've been okay with prepping potion ingredients. I can peel."

Draco raised an eyebrow at her. Even if she wouldn't actually admit it, they got Pansy helping with just a friendly remark? First Tracey, now Pansy, this light side was more dangerous than he thought. Apparently, minimal Slytherin presence in their ranks didn't mean they couldn't be cunning and cook up an ingenious plan when the circumstances called for it. Not all of them were blundering oafs, and it would be dangerous to underestimate them, despite his earlier flippant remark. Tapping his upper lip with his index finger, he decided to bring in some ammunition to remind the other den-members who they were dealing with –who the enemy really was.

He asked, with as much aloof superiority as he could master, "And do you think it is right that we stop using magic, just like that? Be like a Squib? Did you get to hear Potter's message as well?"

Pansy nodded. "Yes, of course, his Patronus, Patrogram, whatever, appeared in the front yard, right after this gong." She waved her hand dismissively, her face pulled into a grimace at the obnoxious memory. "What a terrible sound. My ears took a few minutes to re-adjust. I may have missed the first telling about his tear-inducing childhood miseries."

Draco smiled, satisfied at having Pansy back to complaining about Potter's side, and motioned with his hand for her to carry on. She received his insouciant encouragement with an imperiously raised eyebrow. "I don't know, Draco. Did you see how ominous it looks, this Apocalypto spell? If this spell really is as dangerous as they say, perhaps we have to stop using magic. It's only temporary, isn't it? Until they figure out how to stop it?"

Draco groaned. "Pansy, that's what they want us to believe. Do you really think a little bit of shimmering air will do any harm? They want to make us think that it's dangerous, regaling us with fairy tales about its terrible effects. What they really want is to take our magic, our pureblood power away. You think the Dark Lord would have created something that would prohibit the use of magic? He prided himself with being the heir of Slytherin. Slytherin is the epitome of using magic, of good, strong, well-bred magic. Why would he make us stop using it? It doesn't make sense."

"Many things don't make sense after a war. Starting with the causes of war in the first place." Blaise Zabini barged into the conversation and plopped himself on a turned around chair in front of them, leaning on the backrest. "Couldn't help overhearing your discussion. I'm not apologizing for it. Where do you get off thinking You-know-who was above destroying what he couldn't have, hm? Malfoy?"

Draco took a deep breath to answer, but before he could start, Goyle joined them. He stood in front of them like a first year about to get his first detention, and where Gregory Goyle was usually known to be the muscle and not the mouthpiece of anything, he surprised them all when he said, "Wasn't so bad today. I went with Longbottom to the Hogwarts greenhouses. Was good to be back at school. Familiar, you know? Even if most of it is in ruins."

Draco's defence of everything Voldemort died in his mouth as he stared at his old chum with complete incredulity. They got to Goyle? Tell-me-who-to-torture-first Goyle?

"He really knows his stuff, Longbottom does. Showed me how to care for Dittany, Hellebore, and Boom Berries. Said they were the most needed in these times. He showed me so well, by the end of the day I could do it on my own. He said I had quite a knack for it, Longbottom did. I could tell he was pleased with me."

He gave Draco a scathing look. "Just so you know, there's something I i_can_ /ido." Then he turned and slouched into the kitchen where Draco, Pansy, and Blaise heard him banging about with cupboard doors and plates.

"I never said, you couldn't," Draco muttered nonplussed.

Blaise barked a laugh. "Did you ever say he could?" Draco sent him a glare to which Zabini chuckled darkly.

Pansy drew the attention to herself by making a non-committal noise through her nose. Then she said, "So, who are you with, Draco? Tell me."

Draco had enough of playing games. His simmering anger over the stupidity and adversity of everybody around him made him lose focus. "Granger," he spat. At Pansy's gasped "No! Of all people …," he smiled grimly.

"Oh, yes, and she took me to St. Mungo's today where I had to have my hands in dirty blood and wipe arses all day. i_By hand_./i" He mimicked Pansy's tone of voice. Then he turned to the Slytherin in front of him. "If you have any doubts about what they are up to, let me tell you about my day. Not only did they put me together with Granger who, at the first opportunity, threatened me with Azkaban should I not obey her. Then she made me wade through stinking blood and human excrements all day and hold hands and smile about it – all under threat of throwing me into prison should I even open my mouth. That's what they are trying to do. They are trying to get back at us by making us feel like useless Squibs. They are trying to shut us up and take our magic away, so that we are completely helpless when they finally get rid of us. They already confiscated almost all of our family properties. When nobody remembers us anymore because we've been buried under stinking human detritus, they will do away with us and take the rest. Nobody will say anything at the atrocity because nobody will recall that we even existed, and those who do will think, 'good riddance.' Mudbloods will take the power, but before they do they will make us re-build their houses the Muggle-way and clean up the messy stuff they don't want to touch. Then they will re-introduce magic because, lo and behold, it's i_safe,_ /i and we are no threat to their power anymore."

He had gotten louder and sharper in his exclamations, and, by now, everybody in the room was listening breathlessly. Some looked just as grim as Draco did. He knew those faces and knew who among them had lost their family fortune to the government. Hayworth was a second cousin to the Flints, he knew, the whole family on their way to Azkaban and their Gringotts account seized. Newbourne was related to the Boles and had seen them stripped of their worldly possessions. Everyone knew that the Crabbes were basically broke after their restitutions, Crabbe senior in Azkaban and Camelia Crabbe left alone to put their house up for sale and to find other accommodations. As if grieving over their dead son wasn't enough. The Malfoys, Parkinsons, and Greengrasses still had enough to get by for a few centuries, thanks to secret stashes all over their manors. Some, like the Notts and the Puceys, had taken hits but were still kicking. Theo looked a little uncertain regarding Draco's outburst, and Zabini, as usual, seemed completely unaffected. Most likely, his mother had charmed the officials, and they had left her alone. He just snorted before his rebuttal filled the silence left in the wake Draco's rant.

"We were all given that speech about Azkaban and only having one shot. You haven't seen it yet, have you, Malfoy?"

"Seen what?" Draco pressed out between clenched jaws. He was trying to get his heartbeat under control, to look as cool and composed as a Malfoy should, always master of any situation.

"The Apocalypto curse. The magic that lingers, ripping everybody and everything apart when someone uses magic in a radius of 500 meters around it. You haven't been close to it yet, you've just seen the image of it in today's message," Zabini said calmly.

Draco scoffed. "How do we know i_they_/i didn't just hang something in the air, like that Patrogram of Potter, to keep the fear of the Dark Lord prevalent? That it's actually doing what they tell us it is doing? What if it's completely harmless? But everybody is still afraid because the 'bad magic' will rip you apart, so they worship Potter for defeating the Dark Lord and listen to everyone he's friends with, rejecting everybody he's not?"

"There's no use arguing with a blind man about colour, Malfoy," Blaise said jeeringly. "I'll wait until you've seen, and then you will change your tune. When you see it you will understand why this Squibbing and Muggling makes perfect sense. Just, watch your back, man. I don't want to be held responsible for your demise because you didn't read the signs and didn't listen to well-meaning advice." Some around the room nodded in agreement.

Draco felt like he was splitting the air with a blunt axe. Had they all gone insane?

DMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHG DMHGDMHGDMHG

Malfoy's obnoxious door slam firmly in her enraged mind, Hermione found herself in front of the Burrow after she left the den. It wasn't a conscious decision to come here, more like a reflex; hide, cover, cower, seek the familiar. She didn't feel very happy about her visceral reaction, but Hermione had given up on rising to challenges for the time being. Making it safely through every day without a public breakdown was success enough; and seeing a loving person after a day of anxiety and despair and public animosity toward this miserable spell, for which they had to give up what was rightfully theirs, was the least she could ask for.

Entirely familiar with the Weasley homestead, she simply walked in the door with a loud "Hello". It was eerily quiet, until Ron shot out of the kitchen like a doxy on fire.

"Hermione! What are you doing here?"

Hermione frowned at the less than hearty welcome. "I finished my first day with Malfoy and wanted to see a friendly face. Is that too much to ask?"

When Ron ambled over to her, she realized that he had a dishtowel wound awkwardly around his palm two times. "Are you washing dishes?" she asked curiously.

Ron blushed. "Yeah, and I'm wiping down the kitchen. Pansy helped with some of the dinner preparation, but the tidying up afterwards still needs to be done."

Hermione smiled reassuringly. It was no secret that Ron hated housework, especially now that he had to do it by hand. The least she could do was make him feel like he was doing the right thing.

When Ron reached her, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and gave her a perfunctory peck on the lips. Hermione wound her arms around his waist, and she would have liked nothing better than to bury her face in his chest and sleep for a while, but Ron was already wriggling free. "You can help me, and then I'll be done quicker. Come on, I hate cleaning the kitchen."

Hermione's smile froze a little. More helping? No respite? But Hermione caught herself and sighed. Well, there were people who had it worse than she did.

"How's Molly doing today?" she asked while following Ron into the kitchen. Luckily, it wasn't as chaotic as she had feared.

Ron simply shook his head. It meant no change. The Weasley children had developed their own system of non-verbal communication about their mother's status. Hermione nodded. No change was to be expected.

"How did your work with Malfoy go?" Ron asked suddenly, before Hermione could inquire more. When Hermione stopped in her tracks, lost in thought in the middle of the kitchen, Ron turned around from the sink.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want," he grumbled, seeing her at a loss for words.

Hermione shook her head, her eyes firmly fixed on the pots in the sink, the handles sticking out over the top like a bundle of firewood improperly tied together. It would poke you in the ribs when you carried it. Pulling herself away from the odd thought, she explained, "No, it's not that. It's just … it's just difficult to put into words. He was his usual self, in a way, and yet … the misery on the Dumbledore ward must have reached him. He looked truly shocked. I saw that he understood the horror he helped to develop. I just don't know how much he will deny tomorrow, after a good night's sleep."

Ron snorted and turned back to his washing. "You think he still sleeps well? The git. None of us can. I would give my wand hand for a good night's sleep."

"Don't say that, Ron," Hermione said startled, drawn out of her thoughts about Malfoy by her boyfriend's sudden change of temper. It wasn't unexpected, but it was always so tiresome.

"Why not? We can't do magic anyway, right? We're Squibbing and Muggling it." Ron threw the cloth in his hand into the sink where it hit the water with a splash. "Merlin and Morgana, I hate all this 'doing by hand.' It takes so much longer. I would have been long done if I used a Scourgify. How do Muggles do it without freaking out?"

Hermione stepped behind him and slipped her arms around his waist again, closing her hands at the front. She leaned her head against his back and said, "It's only temporary, Ron. You know that. It may take a long time, but we _will_ get our magic back. I just know it. Until then … it doesn't hurt to do some things by hand -"

"Easy for you to say," Ron interrupted vehemently before she could finish what she herself thought sounded a lot like the propaganda rubbish Kingsley and Arthur always spouted. She had wanted to add "… and you can use magic a little around your house" to make Ron feel better. She knew Arthur would insist that they do as much as possible without magic in their homestead, but he wasn't there all day. He would think that his family would have to set an example, but not at all costs. He would understand that i_some_/i magic was necessary to keep them from going insane, Hermione was sure about that. There were rules and there were rules to bent, at least a little. There was enough insanity in the house as is.

Lost in her deliberations, Hermione missed Ron's sudden move until he turned in her arms angrily. She withdrew her embrace before he squished her hands with his body weight against the counter. Then what he'd said fully sank into her consciousness.

"Why is it easy for me to say, Ron?" Hermione asked, looking straight into the angry lines of her boyfriend's face. Ron looked downright ugly when he made this angry face, Hermione found. Where she loved his goofy face that made her laugh so much, these angry fissures would turn into wrinkles and were there to stay, she knew - a permanent reflection and constant reminder of the horror they all went through. She couldn't blame him, though. She hadn't properly looked at herself in a mirror for months. She was afraid of what she would see.

"Because you are used to it. Before you came to Hogwarts, …" Ron looked away from her. He knew he was nearing the danger zone, she read it in his face. Bringing up her Muggle heritage amounted to stepping on the proverbial thin ice. Not because she was so sensitive to her past - she knew where she came from, and heck, Harry came from the same background - but because the segregation was a difficult topic. Where a witch did housework and cooking with ease - waving her wand like Molly Weasley - a Muggle woman used physical exertion to do the same work. Where a witch was proud to manage her household chores, because it amounted to so little actual work and was a quality piece of magic when done properly, a Muggle woman deserved serious consideration for the amount of actual work she had to do and rarely received it. It was a hot topic, and now, when they all had to do the same hard work, the topic was very relevant. It brought up the issue of which witches, not to mention wizards, could be asked to do this kind of work and which could not. This was an issue they had never faced before, and it was an icky topic.

Avoiding the topic that would inevitably lead to an argument of sorts, as previous experience strongly indicated, Hermione turned instead to the more obvious issue.

"How did it go with Pansy?"

Called back from his churning emotions, Ron turned his face back to her with a frown. "Not too bad, actually. Of course, in the beginning, she didn't want to lift a finger, Slytherin princess that she is. When we gave her the Azkaban speech, she picked up a towel and dried the breakfast dishes slower than a snail. Later, Bill came by and asked her about her family and after that, she really got to work. Mum can really use a hand."

"I know. I really wish I could help, too." Hermione fell in compassionately, moving closer to Ron's lean body, drawn to the promising warmth of a friendly, connecting embrace.

Ron half-way startled and leaned away from her and Hermione felt rejected at the withdrawing movement. "No, Hermione, you can't."

Staring up from the cold distance between their bodies, Hermione frowned. "I can't?"

Ron did the goofy smile she liked so much. Only this time she couldn't find any amusement in it, instead finding it rather sheepish. "Don't be silly, you have much more important things to do than helping my mum wash the dishes. What a waste of your brains that would be." Flustered by his girlfriend's deepening frown and by what could potentially be another angry outburst of epic proportions, Ron stumbled on. "I mean, you have much more important things to do. If things go so well with Malfoy, it seems you can really get through to him. Why would you actually want to waste time washing dishes? I mean …" Hermione actually felt the heat develop under his skin. Ron was sweating bullets in her embrace.

"You don't have to do housework," he blurted out, finally, going red in the face. "You are not the type. There are witches much better suited for it. Lavender, for example."

"Lavender?" Hermione let go of him as if she had been shocked. "You do remember that she's dead?"

Ron squirmed as if under Death Eater torture. "Yes, of course, I remember. I just meant there are good girls who can do housework, and then there's you, who can do so much more."

Hermione wasn't sure if she wanted to be the type of girl who was destined to do housework, but she didn't want to count as a bad girl, either, which was the natural conclusion drawn from Ron's words. "I know there are important things to do, Ron, but I'd be fine helping your family and your mum, too. Washing dishes is not beneath me."

Looking at Ron's angry and bewildered face, Hermione felt crushed. She knew what he meant and how difficult it was for him to find the right words without making a mess out of his message. She knew that he only wanted to let her know how highly he thought of her abilities, her intellect, and her accomplishments. The rejection she felt, however, cut much deeper than her rational thoughts. Coming here today, all she had wanted was a warm body to fall into and to sleep, heal, recover. Now, she felt as if she wasn't welcome in the Burrow to wash dishes and to help his mother - even if it wasn't quite true on a rational level, emotionally it cut so deep that Hermione felt the burn for her potion, her only comfort, deep inside.

She took a step back. "Regardless, we have to go to Carlson's farm tomorrow, so I should probably turn in early. It's going to be hard work, tending cows. Malfoy will likely make a mess, get really dirty, and refuse to work."

"Good, that's good. Better be prepared," Ron said distractedly, deep in thought, working on how to word his message to his over-smart girlfriend.

Hermione took a few more steps back until she stood alone in the middle of the kitchen. "So, please tell Molly I'll be around another time to talk and have tea and to help where I can. If her son lets me, that is," she bit out more angrily than she intended.

Ron startled. "What? No, Hermione, of course, you can stay. I just meant … I didn't mean it that way -"

Hermione had already turned around and was heading towards the entrance door. "Don't bother, Ron. I'll be back when I have i_time_ /ito spare from my important duties."

She didn't feel right. She knew Ron didn't mean it that way, but she couldn't help feeling her own anger bubble inside her, and she didn't want to lash out at him. She felt guilty that she was angry over being compared to a dead girl, that Lavender was the type Hermione wasn't. Angry that she felt angry over the connection Ron had had with Lavender, which she shouldn't because Lavender was dead, and Ron was with her, Hermione, now. The most anger, however, derived from the fact that Hermione couldn't stand the whole situation anymore and wanted to go home to her potion and sleep.

Ron called her back one more time. "Don't be like that, Hermione. Come back. I didn't mean it."

Hermione didn't turn back. She needed to go. "Yes, you did," she mumbled to justify her own actions and left without a backward glance.

DMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHG

**Aaaaand tell me what you think, as usual**


	6. Chapter 6

_A Little Easter gift. Sorry for the delays in updating. Life's crazy right now. However, enjoy._

* * *

Chapter 6:

"We have to help each other to stay strong. We have to support those who cannot adjust to the new ways. But some people are shy. Tell us, tell the Ministry Office of Magic Usage Safety and Surveillance or the Office of No-Magic Education and Support if you suspect someone who needs help."

If Potter had been real, the mild summer breeze would have tussled his hair. Instead, his Patrogram remained untouched by the beautiful day, giving his appearance a very unreal feel. Fits right in with this whole spooky endeavour, Draco thought sardonically – a Potter chimera to scare the world he just "saved."

They were out in the country, the lovely sunshine warming their faces, standing in front of a farm house, with several non-descript faces peeking out through the curtain-hung windows to goggle at the young wizard and witch and the Potter figure that would soon dissipate into thin air. Draco was sure he would have been able to appreciate the nice weather had he managed to sleep peacefully the last two nights. As it was, he hadn't and he didn't. He was downright irritable for want of proper sleep, the effect of human cruelty waking him up at all hours, with the quickly downed coffee this morning a drop on a hot stone. He should have taken his mother and fled to the continent, to relax in the South of France, until the mess in Great Britain had blown over. He'd missed the right exit time, however, not expecting this- nobody could have anticipated this folly- and was now stuck watching the misery unfold. Thoughts like these really didn't help his irritation at all.

When the image of the Apocalypto spell was shown again, Draco felt the shift in the air right next to him. It felt as if Granger's persona was erupting in angry hives, hissing welts erupting where her cool calculating mind usually smoothed every disturbance. Perplexed, he looked over to where she was squirming, flexing her knees as if she wasn't sure whether she was allowed a step. Her face twitched, struggling to stay smooth against the angry lines, and he couldn't shake the thought of likening her behaviour to a cornered wildcat, animalistic in its nature. Completely nonplussed, he couldn't explain Granger's visceral reaction to an image of shimmering air. While he would be the first to admit that he had no idea what a typical Gryffindor's primarily impulsive reactions would mean in its lack of sophistication most of the time, he did think he had a measure of Granger. She had her edges and corners, certainly, which, when illuminated, showed a highly-complex picture of a talented mind, he would give her that. This, however, this ruthless anger against a government-sanctioned magical message – so raging that it seemed to be shredding control of her magic - went completely against what he considered her grain.

Regardless, he didn't mind whatever it was she was inadvertently dousing him with in her anger. Like the hot-water shower he had taken this morning, she bathed him in angry air that ran down his limbs like tiny, hot pinpricks all over. He was quite sure that her fallout was unintentional because she didn't even look his way. Nonetheless, he felt his body stirring, pulling him in her direction, in a way he'd never felt before. He was, however, quite willing to follow it.

Then he shook himself. This was Granger. What was she doing, this crazy Muggle-born?

When Draco addressed her with a consternated "Granger?" she startled; then, she took a deep, calming breath and pulled herself together. After a second breath, her face relaxed, the angry needles stopped and she looked like her usual self. Draco breathed deeply to regain his senses after the onslaught of unaccounted experiences, while the world continued to turn.

"And now, I'll give over to Bill Weasley, who will explain how to open bottles or canned food with a corkscrew or can-opener." The magically recorded message droned on and the image of Bill Weasley replaced Potter's, but Draco and Hermione didn't pay attention to what he said. Hermione didn't because she already knew what Bill was teaching; and she rather needed the time to master her emotional inner turmoil.

Draco didn't listen because he was eyeing Granger like an unexpected care package containing loads of his favourite chocolate. Screw the corkscrews, he was going to use his time in captivity more efficiently by checking out this unexpectedly delightful side of Potter's Muggle-born hanger-on. He would need his customary wit and found it considerable muddled at the moment. My, but this was very distracting.

Shaking his head at the excitable witch, standing next to him, staring with seemingly rapt attention at Bill Weasley's Patrogram, Malfoy demanded hoarsely, "Why are we here?"

"Because Carlson is sick," said witch replied drily without looking Draco's way. If he didn't know better, he'd say she obeyed the law to the letter like a good citizen, standing there and listening to the government-issued messages. However, Granger's simmering anger still hung in the air like the smell of fresh bread. It made his mouth water as he recalled the sensation of magical energy prickling along his skin. Draco knew there was something he could exploit for his benefit. He just had to figure out how.

Before they could turn to their task for the day, three loud pops in the middle of the yard rendered them motionless. As one, they turned their heads to see Smith and two companions striding toward them. Grumpily, Draco realized that they had the privilege to Apparate as they pleased.

With one look around, Smith had taken note of the situation and with a nod sent his companions to the front door of the farm house. Then, wearing a smug smile he made his way toward Hermione and Draco.

"Ah, Ms. Granger," he exclaimed. "I'm pleased to see that you follow _orders," _he put the impetus on orders and motioned vaguely to the Patrogram, "and listen to our daily message. And Mr. Malfoy, too, who would have thought? That he would follow orders, that is." He laughed brashly, while the sound of aggressive thumping on a wooden door drifted over from the house. "How's the Squibbing and Muggling going, Malfoy? Feel right adjusted yet?"

Both Draco and Granger looked at the intruder with schooled features that did a poor job of disguising their frowns.

When Smith noticed that nobody was laughing with him, he stopped and scrutinized the pair. Draco noticed that there was a satisfied glint in Smith's pale blue eyes and he could just imagine how pleased Smith had to be. This position was perfect for a power monger like him.

Smith droned on. "It seems, however, that not everybody is doing it. That's where I come in. It won't do, will it? Everybody needs to watch these daily messages. The service provided is here to help, but they have the duty to watch. Correct, Ms. Granger?"

Granger glared back, and Draco couldn't help but be delighted that Smith was on the receiving end of Granger's glare. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to bother Smith too much.

"Correct, Mr. Smith. Still, I expect you to give the Carlsons a _gentle _reminder. They have, as you know, enough problems on their hands, and they committed _no crime_," Granger replied sharply.

Smith clutched his chest dramatically. "But of course. However, if things continue this way, it will _become a crime_ not to watch these message. For now, we are only here to remind people. But these messages have to be taken seriously. We will not let things be blown out of proportion again. Right, Mr. Malfoy? Better to nip the lazy bums and rebels in the bud before they can form a resistance." He laughed again, and Draco knew for certain who his least favourite person was. And Granger didn't even come close to that position. Draco saw that she was biting her cheek on the inside to keep herself from reacting in any way to Smith's provocations. In a sudden bout of chivalry - who knew where that came from- Draco had the urge to stand next to her - backing her up and lending a little pureblood legitimacy to her stance. He suppressed it as quickly as it had come, especially since he remembered that there was no pureblood supremacy anymore.

A middle-aged witch with a sunken face and greying hair had come to the door of the house, and Smith turned about with a sudden seriousness. "Well, be that as it may, I have work to do. Good day to you, Ms. Granger. Malfoy," he added with a dismissive sneer in Draco's direction before swaggering over to the entrance.

Granger stood undecided on the spot for half a minute; but, when she heard loud voices from the house, she dashed forward, leaving Draco alone in the middle of the yard.

* * *

Five minutes later, Smith and his team had disappeared under loud protestations, and Draco was following Granger and a lanky boy through green pastures.

It turned out that, today, they had to herd the cows to different pastures, ones closer to the house, to make the milking less of an ordeal. There was a ten-year-old boy with a shaggy dog assigned to show them where to find the cows as well as where the cows had to go. With unkempt hair and blank eyes, a dirty little face and spindly arms, this boy was the very picture of an under-privileged child. From the vacant expression, Draco wouldn't have been surprised if the boy could speak at all and was, more or less, retarded.

However, Granger had spoken to him in the friendly tone she reserved for everybody-except Draco - and Smith, Draco determined satisfied, before he realized that this put him in the same pot as Zador Smith. He would have to change that, and soon. When spoken to, the boy had nodded politely, his gaze full of admiration for the war heroine witch. He'd replied with a well-mannered, "Yes, Ms. Granger. Please, follow me," before he cast an unsure look at Draco and stalked off, his dog hot on his heels.

This galled Draco tremendously when even the dog woofed a short bark at him. How did the boy know who was the hero and who was not? He, Draco, was helping, wasn't he? Draco Malfoy was herding cows to help the less fortunate; he was an angry Malfoy, stinking of cow poop because he stepped in it and had no magic to clean his shoes, but he helped nonetheless. He wondered why he, in particular, had to do this.

"Where's his family?"

"Too young and here," Granger motioned to the boy with a jerk of her hand, "Sick or tending to the sick ones."

Following Granger and the boy, Draco tried to clean his shoes surreptitiously on sods of grass by the road side, cursing in his mind the fact that he didn't have his wand and couldn't do a proper Scouring charm. Huffing and puffing and wiping to clean his shoes, and not lose Granger in the process, Draco noticed how his irritation was multiplied by his lack of magic. He missed his wand and the magic that flowed through it. It felt like missing a hand or a foot or any natural extension of himself, with only a phantom feeling of what was supposed to be there. Even before he had his own wand, before he turned eleven, there had always been this distinct feeling that something had to be there, in his hand, an anticipatory tingling that finally found a match when he held his first wand. Its use restricted these days, he felt agitated whenever he received his wand for a few hours before bedtime and had to give it away again. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, as if he had to hold his pee. It was particularly bad in the morning, after a fitful sleep during which he dreamed of bathing in magic, swaddled like a baby in what was supposed to be his birthright. Never had anybody ever mentioned the possibility that his magic could be taken away from him. He was a pureblood and it was his right to wield magic. Voldemort would have never stood for it.

He did realize, however, that his irritated tingling was starting to subside, out in the countryside, in the sunshine, hobbling undignified behind Granger and this mangy boy. There was something soothing in the air that smoothed his frazzled nerves like a mother's hand. Draco wondered how this could be as he was never susceptible to a pretty landscape or beauty of nature of some sorts. Then he noticed that he still felt Granger's anger roiling away, despite her politeness to the boy and her silence now, reaching him like a magical tongue every once in a while and, inexplicably, calming him.

Draco scolded himself, mentally, how he could even think that a lowly Muggleborn was in any way able to have magic to a point that it could be pleasing to a pureblood like himself, and he blamed his exhaustion-addled brain for it. Nevertheless, the soothing effect was there and, since there had to be a logical explanation, he promised himself to be on the lookout for clues.

Having reached the pasture with ten or twelve perfectly normal cows, he took the stick Granger passed him and imitated the way she and the boy made noise and hit the cows slightly on the bum to move them forward, toward the farm in the distance. Even though the cows mooed in protest and bumped against each other, and Draco had to be on the look-out so that they did not step on his feet or, Merlin forbid, touch him with their poop-caked behinds, and the dog barked to his heart's content at the large moving animals, their walk back toward the house was quite uneventful. This left Draco, left alone to his thoughts, to vent his frustration, by imagining a certain poster-boy Potter, becoming the pawn in the government's machinations, after he had helped to topple the previous regime. Rebellious thoughts of a magical puppet show with Potter dancing a jolly jig while Shacklebolt the Minister sat in the back and pulled the strings flashed in his mind. He was sure the current government wouldn't like to know what he thought.

When they were done, Mrs. Carlson came out, and the boy went back inside. A pale and haggard looking woman, she brought them lemonade and then stood and watched them drink it. She looked entirely forlorn and shaken up, and Draco was not surprised when Granger took her in her arms, still holding her half-empty glass. Mrs. Carlson came willingly and heaved a dry sob into Granger's shoulder.

"We'll find a way, Mrs. Carlson," the younger witch said softly. "We'll find it, and until then, we'll be here helping. Smith won't be coming back any time soon, if I have anything to say at all with the Minister, and you are not alone. We'll be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and if _we_ don't come, somebody else will. We are here to help you."

"We have to come back tomorrow?" Draco blurted out. Granger's glance would have frozen him solid if she had been capable of non-verbal magic. As it were, Mrs. Carlson didn't hear him, or if she did she ignored him, because she was sniffling into Granger's collar, and the young witch did her very best to stroke over the older woman's back after she'd pushed her glass into Draco's hand. He had been tempted to simply drop it, old habits and all, not touching anything a Muggle had touched, silly pettiness, but had reconsidered because of Granger's anger emanating from her in waves. While he liked the feel of it, he remembered that it didn't pay to push Granger too far. His cheek burned a bit at the flesh memory. While deeply enjoyable, it was going to be a challenge, he knew, to not rile her up i _too/i _ much.

Still, when everything was done and Mrs. Carlson had returned inside, he couldn't help asking, "What's wrong with Carlson?"

Granger took a deep breath before answering. "He was hit with a Babbling charm."

Draco had a hard time holding in his laughter; however, Granger's face forbade such emotional outbursts. "Why can't we, why can't _you,_ because I'm not allowed to use magic, or if not you personally, one of you, a Ministry official, simply end the spell?" He hated the way he had to express himself so complicatedly, but he wanted to leave no doubt that he was _not_ one of the Ministry. If he were, he'd have more rights. Since he didn't, he wouldn't raise a finger if not forced to do so.

Hermione swept her arm out onto the far fields, half a kilometer away, where the heat shimmered over the pastures. "Because of this."

Draco looked. At first, all he could see was the air moving in the heat of the day, the swirls one sees when hot air rises and cold air moves down. "What, the heat?" he said ignorantly.

"Look closer," Granger said through pressed lips.

So he looked again. He really looked; and then it clicked. On second sight, the air moved wrong, and he remembered the images of shimmering air they'd been shown in the daily messages. Draco couldn't exactly pinpoint how it went wrong precisely because it was still moving up like hot air, and it looked as harmless as a purple Pygmy Puff, but he felt the magic in the air and it felt wrong. First, he considered whether this magic hanging in the still air had been the reason he had felt fairly content all day; that he had felt more pulsing magic in his tingling limbs than usual. Ultimately, he decided that it couldn't be. This hovering magic had the same effect as standing in front of a sleeping dragon or a basilisk, which looked the other way. The tiny hairs in your neck stood up, and your immediate impulse was to run. All things considered, however, you had to force yourself to go very quietly, lest you pull the beast's attention to yourself. There was nothing that made you feel remotely comfortable about it.

As it were, he stood very still. "What is it?" he whispered.

"It can't hear you," Granger remarked sarcastically. "Draco Malfoy, meet the very reason why we cannot fix our world and return it to the way it was before. This is Voldemort's _Apocalypto_ spell."

Draco looked at the shimmering mess and felt betrayed. This was what he'd helped create? A magic that forbade all other magic? This had been Voldemort's- yes, he was going to say the name, for crying out loud- back-up plan, to destroy the world he couldn't have, Draco included?

As bitter as this thought felt in its trueness, Draco refused to believe it. Even if this magic felt forbidding, it couldn't be meant to destroy their world. This had to be wrong and Granger misunderstood. Wouldn't be the first time.

"My world, Granger," he corrected her automatically while ruminating. Then he said more forcefully, "My world, not yours."

Hermione gasped next to him and then snarled, "Your world, Draco Malfoy? Then why the heck am I working my butt off to save it?"

He looked down on her sideways. "I have no idea, Granger, nor do I want to know. Either you're try to make up for your lacking blood, or you are simply stupid despite all your book knowledge. Either way it makes no difference to me."

Before he could turn away, Hermione had him at wand point. "We are not supposed to use magic around this spell because the last time we did it ripped two cows apart as if they were put through a meat grinder. Instead of piling the meat up properly like a grinder would, it catapulted the bits and pieces into space. A single horn was found two counties to the East. The Minister absolutely forbade us to put any humans in the same danger by using magic anywhere close to the spell. And since we don't know where exactly the spell has been used, Kingsley told us to use magic only in designated, safe areas, if at all."

Standing at arm's length and growling, Draco got a whiff of Granger's smell. She smelt clean and like some kind of flowery soap. He scoffed in his mind. Of course, she wouldn't smell like dirt. She had magic, didn't she? Even if that wasn't right. That she had threatened him because he'd told her the truth only proved that the Muggle-borns were trying to overpower the purebloods. World upside down, wasn't it? It fit that Granger was almost spitting fire in his face. She took another step closer to him, and he saw her clear skin flushed red on the cheeks and couldn't help imagining how nice it would feel. Pulled back to reality, he felt her anger emanating from her like a force he wasn't able to overcome. When the needle pricking started again, he briefly considered that maybe he didn't _want_ to overcome this force. Highly distracted, he had to force himself to focus on her words when she continued.

"But if you tell me one more time that this isn't my world, Draco Malfoy, I'll have you shipped to Azkaban before you finish your breath." Having stepped up further, she hissed directly into his face. Draco's natural impulse was to step away from a threat and potential contamination from another being. But then he would have to step away from the prickly feeling, too, and that stopped his impulse. It was something he didn't want to do at all. Locking his knees and taking a shallow breath, he straightened his spine when he noticed that he'd sunk down a little to the smaller witch's level.

"I don't need any other reason," she continued snidely. Draco felt her mood shifting in reaction to his withdrawing movement, her hot anger abating, turning to cold detachment. The needle pricking subsided, too. "I can invent some. You are, for all intents and purposes, at my beck and call because I am your 'handler'. If you don't do as I say, you lose."

There was something to her face when she threatened him, a certain tilt to her lips, a glare in her eyes, and a flare to the wings of her nose that served as a testimony to her grit. She used to be determined to the point of ruthlessness, didn't she? Single-mindedly determined, different from boisterous Gryffindors in general, right?

She growled, and Draco stared, fixated on her fire-spitting eyes, an undetermined tension pulling up from his legs, set in a defensive stance, through his belly into his lungs where the breath hitched the tiniest bit. He couldn't remember when or even if he'd ever been alone with her, seeing that she had always been a part of the Golden Trio, always a part of something bigger, of the other side, a fixture at Potter's side, a smart-mouthed, know-it-all, Mudblood. She'd been a factor in calculating the "good side's" potential, Potter's survival and success. So, he'd never encountered her one on one, and he was more than surprised and a little uneasy that part of such an encounter could leave any pleasant impression. He had always suspected that nothing good came from her, only aggravation, if her lecture here was anything to go by.

"It's your decision if your pride over your purebloodedness is worth more than your freedom at the end of this process. I won't make it especially difficult for you, I promise you that. You will simply do the same things that are required of me, work in the same places I do, to the best of your abilities, but if you don't live up to _my_ expectations I won't hesitate to lie to get you into prison."

Well, well, wasn't that very Slytherin of her? Despite the threat of Azkaban with almost no control over his destiny, Draco found her attitude almost appealing. He wouldn't be able to live up to "goodness," but he felt almost at home with the opportunity to manipulate her expectations.

He almost grinned when she finished her rant. He was going to take a lot of joy in vexing her. "And you will _never_ while we work together tell me again that I don't belong here. Or I will put you through the grinder before I get Kingsley to send you to Azkaban. Is that understood?"

The pleasurable gush of her anger gone, Draco felt he would have to be very diligent to invoke it again without crossing her line of demarcation. The witch was dangerous when pushed too far. Right now, it wouldn't pay to anger her further, it would serve him well to bow out graciously and save his hide, so he could incite her again at another time. It was going to be a challenge, but he was looking forward to enjoying the effects of her anger again.

It would require, however, that he defer to her wishes this time.

Even though his jaw clenched automatically at his injured pride, a Malfoy being threatened and cowed by this Muggle-born - and only a Gryffindor would have blustered over it - he nodded tersely and stepped back.

Granger smiled grimly in reply. "Good. Then go and muck out the stables. There's a week's worth of cow dung in there. Oh, and Malfoy?" She called him back when he had already turned toward the barn. With folded arms she gave him one malicious smirk.

"What, Granger?" he growled.

She chuckled darkly. "Get dirty."

* * *

In the afternoon, the boy joined Draco in the barn. While Granger was in the house, helping Mrs. Carlson, Draco stood knee-deep in cow muck - wishing he had something to plug up his nose because the stench was suffocating - trying to get the best handle on the pitchfork. The boy emerged from the next stall and took the fork from him like a robot.

"Here, hold it like this. And then just get under the muck and lift it up and into the pushcart. I'll show you where to bring it later."

Draco gave the boy a scathing look and stuck the fork into the dung as shown. He'd loaded it too full and, unused to heavy lifting - he was a wizard, for crying out loud- he lost the grip on the weight of the dung-loaded fork and dropped the whole thing with a loud clatter. Biting his lips, he tried it again less loaded and after two trials he had figured out how to do it properly, using the momentum of the weight to carry it with minimal arm strength, of which he had pitiful little – again, wizard! The boy just stood and watched him, oblivious to the world around him. Shouldn't he be helping, too, Draco wondered glumly.

"Why are you just standing there? Go, do your own stall," Draco snapped at him.

The boy ignored him and just looked at the way the pushcart filled, fork by fork, with his hand on his panting dog's head.

"Why are you here?" he finally asked.

Draco gave him the patented Malfoy sneer. "Because I have to be. Why aren't you helping?" At this the boy turned and went into the next stall to get his own pitchfork. Then he came back and loaded muck onto the same pushcart as Draco did. Together, they finished the stall in minutes. Draco wiped his hands on the leg of his pants and couldn't help a smug, satisfied grin over his accomplishment.

The boy motioned Draco to follow him, to push the cart around the corner of the barn onto the muck-heap. A wooden plank led to the top, and Draco had to push hard, sweat pearls accumulating on his forehead under the heat and exertion, to get the full cart all the way up, then push it over to let the muck slide off.

As he walked back into the stable, he asked the boy, "What's your name?"

The boy tottered along next to him and replied with a simple, "Abel."

"Abel." Draco picked it up while pushing the cart into the next stall. "And are you the oldest in the family, Abel?"

Abel shook his head. "No, I have … I had a sister. Adele. What's your name?"

"My name is Draco Malfoy." With hindsight, Draco would have given a lot to stop the boy's flinch, and to eradicate the gleam of recognition from his eyes. He clearly preferred the boy's overall wariness toward him from before over this sign of recognition. Ah, so he had heard of the Malfoys - naturally. Draco tried his best to ignore the boy's reaction. He did the first thing that came to mind instead. Purely human reaction, he was sure.

"So, what about your sister?"

The boy went back to his dullness in a blink. "She's dead."

Malfoy was almost moved; another victim of the Dark Lord's regime, he thought; on a basic human level, he could sympathise. However, his brain didn't make the connection fast enough, and so his mouth was too quick for decency. "Oh," it said. "How did she die?"

Abel looked away. In the way he didn't answer immediately and just stared outside, avoiding eye contact, Draco's Slytherin alarms went off like a Caterwauling Charm: there was a lie in the making. The boy's whole body screamed to hide what his brain processed at this moment. And then Draco noticed where Abel was looking: the shimmering magic hovering over the land where peaceful cows had once grazed. Draco almost didn't hear what Abel said for an explanation, in a voice too small for a boy who likely would have started Hogwarts after the summer.

"Don't know. She's dead," he finally said.

"Abel, go and check on the cows, will you?" Draco heard Granger's voice behind him. With a dull "Okay" Abel wandered off, throwing sticks and stones for his dog as he went.

Not wanting to face what was clearly in front of him, Draco asked without turning around. "What happened to his sister?"

"He doesn't remember. The Death Eaters got her," Granger said sharply. At this point, Draco couldn't help wanting to see her face. She stood in the doorway of the stable, the sunlight illuminating her from behind so he still couldn't see her mien, but he could see from her posture that anger was not on her mind at the moment and that a lot of mental stability was needed to deal with the circumstances.

"Do I want to know?" he asked, uncharacteristically hesitant in light of her resignation and somewhat disappointed that he didn't receive another dousing of her anger waves. However, he wasn't going to admit just yet that he started to look forward to those.

Granger shook her head. "She was fourteen. And no," she said, "you don't." She pushed off from the doorframe and made to leave. "When you're done here, come over to the house. Mrs. Carlson has more lemonade."

* * *

An hour later, Draco had the chance to see the "dead sister" in question.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of lemonade in his hand, trying to relax his tired back. Never in his life had he had back pain from labour before, and while on one hand it pained him, literally, on the other hand it made him oddly satisfied to have tackled and mastered the mucking of the stables alone, with only a little help from Abel.

Feeling quite smug, listening to the babbling father somewhere far off in the house and thinking how comfortable the live-in kitchen in this farmhouse was, in a quaint kind of way- no comparison to the splendours of the Manor, of course- he looked up to see a young girl of about 14 years wander aimlessly into the kitchen and stop in the middle. Draco raised an eyebrow. He had seen what Granger had entitled as "too young" from the Carlsons' children, a 5-year-old girl with blond corkscrew locks playing with her dolls; and he knew Abel. There was supposed to be no other child in the house.

He observed this girl carefully. With her tousled hair and faraway look and open swaying bathrobe and dirty nightgown, she strongly reminded him of Longbottom's mother, who had given him the candy wrapper. A kind woman, he thought, even if she was loony. Speaking of which, the girl's whole demeanour reminded him strongly of Loony Lovegood's odd habit of appearing somewhere and having no intention to leave. This girl looked entirely out of place.

"Hey," he said. "Who are you?" The girl didn't pay him any mind and stared at the oven as if she had never seen one before. Draco looked around for Granger or Mrs. Carlson, uncomfortable with this clearly deranged girl, when Abel came in, followed by his loyal dog.

"Abel," Draco said, relieved to see somebody familiar. "Who's that?" He indicated the girl with a head jerk.

Abel looked around the kitchen, saw the girl and shrugged. Draco thought it very odd that Abel didn't consider it strange that there was a foreign girl in his house. The boy took a glass of lemonade and sat down next to Draco, patting his dog. When he looked up again, he looked right at the girl and this time he asked, "Hey, what's your name?"

The girl didn't answer. She clearly thought the window sill more interesting than the boy and the young wizard in the kitchen. When he got no reply, Abel turned to his dog again.

"Say, have you seen her before?" Draco asked the boy next to him.

Abel looked at him. "Who?"

Draco was perplexed. Was he seeing a ghost? "Well, the girl there. The one with the brown hair who looks out the window? In a night gown? A girl here in the kitchen?"

Abel looked right at the girl and Draco saw how his eyes glazed over. "Huh?" he said.

Draco felt his anger rise. Was he playing stupid with him, this boy, after all the work Draco had done for his parents? Without pay and purely out of the goodness of his heart, he wanted to add. Well, not quite, but he _had_ worked. "Well, this girl over there."

"Oh," Abel said. "Hi, what's your name?" And again he turned away, scratching his dog's head, when he received no answer.

Draco would have done something drastic had Granger not hurried into the kitchen at that moment. She took one look at Draco looking annoyed, Abel sitting next to him completely oblivious, and the girl in the corner. She raised her eyebrows at Draco, who shrugged, and went to the girl, whose hands she took gently. The girl twitched but did not pull away. Granger spoke softly.

"Adele, come with me, please. Come, your mother is waiting. Or do you need anything to eat or drink? No? Then, let's go." Granger pulled the girl's hand, gently guiding her out of the kitchen and closing the door behind her. Draco felt like he had been doused with cold water. Hadn't Granger said the Death Eaters had gotten Abel's sister? But she hadn't said "killed". She had just never refuted Abel's claim that his sister was dead. Why didn't the boy recognize his sister?

Abel got up and left the kitchen, with the typical aimless business of a child exploring its world, once he'd finished his drink. Draco sat and stared after the young boy. Despite the closed door, he could still hear the father's babbling, in addition to Granger's strong voice and Mrs. Carlson's whines.

He came to the conclusion that something was very wrong with this family, and he vented vehemently that night in the den about being forced to work with crazy people, him being a Malfoy and all.

* * *

The next day went just as the previous day, and the day after that Draco Malfoy was ill.


	7. Chapter 7

_Yes, yes, I know. Sorry. From the "before the summer, hurry to get everything done" to "what to do with the kids during summer so I can continue my work" to actual vacation time to "after the summer, what, where has the summer gone, hurry, hurry, get back to work" and a remix, for both my beta and myself, there was little time to work on this chapter. So, sorry. _

_I cannot promise improvement, however. You have to be patient, sorry._

_Enjoy Draco's side of things. Things are not becoming easier, no thanks to him._

_..._

* * *

Chapter 7

Hermione stood over Malfoy's bed in his small, white room, staring at his shivering form. Pansy lurked in the doorframe behind her, scowling. "I told you he was really sick."

Hermione sighed, feeling rather like a Reception teacher explaining things to a room of 3-year-olds. "Yes, Pansy, but I had to check. You know it's not outside the realm of possibility for you to cover for one another and lie about an illness. You are working hard, all of you. It would be natural to want a day off."

She put a hand on Draco's forehead, to which, despite his otherwise weakly demeanour, he managed an immediate reaction - jerking his head away with a grimace. He might have recently discovered some benefits to being near Granger, but he still wouldn't let her touch him.

Hermione sighed again, raising an eyebrow at his pettiness. "Alright, I'll leave you be for today and go on to the orphanage as planned. Take care of yourself, Malfoy. I expect you back at work tomorrow."

Draco watched woefully as Pansy accompanied Granger out, hoping she would come back to check on him. When she ambled back a minute later, she sat on his bed and stroked contemplatively over his blanket-covered arms, as if she was searching for the right words, unsure how Draco would receive them. Uncharacteristically for a Slytherin, she didn't seem to mind that she was openly displaying her perplexity, and Draco wondered if the constant work in a Gryffindor house was tainting her trademark acrimony. He was too tired, however, to help her along. His head hurt fiercely, and he was not inclined to give Pansy even an inch of accommodation.

Finally, she made up her mind and spoke while firmly scrutinizing his bedspread. "Well, I applaud you for getting out today. Well done. I could use some of your techniques if you cared to share them?"

Draco was certain that this was not at all what she actually wanted to say. But, with the pain making his head feel like it was wedged in a vice, he could honestly do without a discussion about their current state. He coughed. "It's no trick, Pansy. I _am _sick. But if you want to feel like dragon dung, be my guest."

After a pause he added, "If you want to help, however, tea would be nice."

Unfortunately, Daphne Greengrass called from the hallway at just that moment. "Pansy? Weasley is here."

"Ah, there's my summons. You'll have to get your tea yourself, I'm afraid." Pansy smiled reassuringly as she patted the comforter where she suspected his hand to be, before she jumped up and left, carefully closing the door behind her. Draco waved tiredly after her, belatedly realizing that he should have asked her to leave the door open so that he would at least be able to _hear _some life outside his door, even if he was sure that nobody would come to visit him. Left alone, not to mention shut-in in his little white-on-white, cell-like room, he felt rather gloomy. It certainly didn't help his mood when he remembered the conversation he'd had the previous night in the den common room.

...

_He'd talked himself into a rage, despite his nausea. He had a mind-splitting headache from the root of his nose to the base of his skull, and black spots appeared in his vision. Short of vomiting, he hiccupped bile, which in turn made his speech taste bitter. Still, he felt too restless to sleep and rest his tired brain; thus, he stood in the middle of his fellow den members, complaining about crazy people, misery, work, the new regime, and people like Smith. Complaints about Granger were suspiciously absent, but that didn't keep his fellow den members from shutting him up._

_"And don't you think it strange that Smith knew about that poor family? How did he know they were still in the house?"_

_There was a collective eye roll throughout the room, but it was Zabini, who answered dismissively, sending a sharp look at Harrick Newbourne, who had just opened his mouth. He closed it quickly again under the scrutiny of his elder, but failed to suppress an uncomfortable shiver while staring at the floor. Zabini spoke without taking his eyes off the younger one. "Yes, Malfoy, very strange. Merlin, perhaps he came by coincidence. Didn't you say the Carson family received extra attention?" _

_Malfoy replied with a grim face, pulling his facial muscles to counteract the pain on the inside of his cranium. "No, he specifically referred to keeping guard over people to ensure they are actually watching the messages, and that he wanted to make it a punishable offense." _

_Avoiding eye contact, his gaze turned resolutely to the floor, Harrick uttered stubbornly, "They are watching us. The billboards. The eyes are following us."_

_Before the words could sink into Draco's tired brain, Zabini had jumped out of his seat and yelled at the younger man. "Shut up, Newbourne. I told you not to mention it. Nobody should know about your paranoia. What do you think is going to happen to you when it comes out that you're sick in the head? Do you want to "disappear" like the others? Go to St. Mungo's for an indeterminate amount of time? There is nothing going on, get it into your head."_

_Uncomfortable shifting occurred all over the room as people scrambled to find something to do. Something to hold in their hands to pretend they had been too busy to overhear anything. _

_Draco felt as if he'd been bitten by a doxy and the venom was making him hallucinate. "Disappear?" he croaked against the steel bands around his forehead. His vision was swimming, and it was becoming difficult to hold his eyes open._

_"There's nothing, Malfoy," came Zabini's reply. "Harrick _thinks_ people have disappeared because he hasn't seen them in a few days, but there's no proof. They could be anywhere, busy elsewhere. We all have things to take care of. I personally think he's losing it. Harrick always had a strong bond to his mother, didn't you, Harrick? Are you still crying at night? Mummy, mummy." Zabini imitated a small child's voice. "Still sucking your thumb, too, crying for your mummy?"_

_Newbourne was beet-red in embarrassment, but nobody laughed. Nobody said anything either, until a small voice piped up from the far corner of the sofa. _

_"I don't mind those messages from the Patrograms or billboards," Tracy Davis said quietly, winding a string of her blond hair around her index finger again and again. She looked unseeingly past the sparse room's only decoration – a calla lily, its soft lilac colour doing nothing to brighten the room and its awkwardly-sweet smell rather off-putting- staring out the window across the dreary moor and spoke. "They actually give good tips on how to do things without magic. I never knew there _was _an alternative. I feel great knowing that I _have _a choice. I'm glad they give us those messages. I wouldn't want to miss them."_

_Tracy would say that, Draco thought. She'd hated what magic could do ever since her father died. However, he noticed how a wave of relief went through the people present. As if they had been tight as a bow before when listening to him, and now that somebody said it was alright, they finally had a chance to relax. _

_"Yes, they do give good tips, don't they?" Daphne, who sat right next to Tracy, chimed in. She took Tracy's hand and gave her an encouraging smile. Tracy turned her head briefly and smiled back. Then she went back to the window, pulling her friend's hand into her lap._

_Draco felt that the tide had turned and a huge, ice-cold wall of water was suddenly rushing his way. He was almost powerless against their complacency. If people started to relax into the new situation, he wouldn't be able to rile them up. And he needed their support to topple the current circumstances. Close to panic, he snarled at Daphne, "Of course, she would say that, Daphne, you know why, but you can't really think-"_

_"Oi!" Daphne yelled at him before he could finish his sentence. "Don't tell me what I can think, Malfoy. And don't talk to Tracy like that. What do you think you're playing at? Do you really think we will continue to abide by your pedigree when you cannot even help out in the kitchen? Where were you when we cooked and ate and washed up, hm? Lording in your room, waiting for us to serve you?" With narrowed eyes, she hissed the last sentence to nods of agreement all around the room. "We would have let you go without dinner if Pansy hadn't stood up for you, Malfoy. She insisted on saving you a plate. Just so you know."_

_In the ensuing silence of Daphne's outburst, Declan mumbled, "We are all purebloods here, but that won't feed us."_

_Ignoring the other young man, and despite his pains and his increasing trepidation of being the one person in the room who sat on the hot chair, Draco was able to execute the Malfoy mannerisms of old. He sneered in the face of the possibility that his former schoolmates were showing him open defiance - as if the Malfoy name had no value anymore. "Manners, Daphne. Is this how you treat a former almost brother-in-law? If everything had gone to plan, I would have married your sister, remember? By virtue of that, I would be your superior, thus, I quite think you are forgetting yourself."_

_The air stood still for a heartbeat while everybody else in the room gasped. It may have been true that, in traditional pureblood etiquette, the brother-in-law stood in for an absent father or older brother of an unmarried pureblood girl or woman, but this rule hadn't been quite observed in the latter half of _this _century, and everybody knew this. Draco was quite aware that he was not playing into the sympathies of the other girls in the room, nor some boys to boot, but he couldn't keep his mouth shut. After the many times his father had overruled and silenced him by force, even verbal force, it felt like admitting defeat to Draco if he let anybody else have the last word. A very small voice in his head told him quite firmly that he was likely digging his own grave with that strategy, but he couldn't help himself. The part of his brain that was responsible for speech and lack of restraint drove him on._

_Daphne looked as if she was going to explode in the face of his audacity. Her eyes bulged in a mad fight with her mouth for dominance to express her anger – whether to incinerate Malfoy with a glare or smash him against the wall with a verbal barrage. In the silence before the storm, Tracy squeezed her friend's hand in her lap, then lifted it and held it against her cheek. Daphne looked at her incredulously, the wind suddenly taken out of her attack. Tracy gave her an assuring smile, then put her hand down and got up. Turning about, she spoke with a clear voice while leaving, "I'm dead tired, I'm going to bed."_

_Two other girls, Orla and Ursula, who sat nearby, followed her in a heartbeat with emphatic nods, none looking at Draco directly._

_This was the moment Draco realized he himself had just upped the ante. If he wasn't able to rally his fellows anymore over unfair treatment, the fight had just gotten exponentially harder. In light of this outlook, he bit his lip and felt so tired and weak that he was afraid his knees would buckle. While his brain was giving off painful cramps, there was the option of sobs escaping him, too. He would have followed the girls to go to bed, but there was still Daphne's reply to come. He had to wait it out, and he braced himself for the fallout._

_Daphne, however, merely got up as well. Unlike Tracy, who had simply left the room to escape the tension, Daphne walked out like a queen who'd had an encounter with a disrespectful subject. Its punishment was beneath her and she would leave it to somebody else. She simply stopped at the door, with her hand on the handle, her face forward, her back ruler-straight and said, "We are done. I'm washing my hands of you, Malfoy." The door clap put finality on her words before Draco could gather up a reply._

_The trance that had mesmerized every onlooker thawed slowly. Draco saw some foreheads furrow in strategizing, the Slytherin-way, some heads turn his way exasperatedly, some mouths moisten for sharp replies. He saw it, and cold fear gripped his chest because his head was empty. Aware that his last lash against Daphne had broken an unspoken rule, he was afraid that he was losing at his own game. He had never before lost a Slytherin game for power that took place in the underwater common room at Hogwarts, habitually outwitting his opponents. This time, however, he knew of no way out without breaking any more rules. If only his brain would stop acting up._

_However, before anybody could utter a word, Pansy shot out of her seat as if poked with a needle. "Yes," she said with enthusiasm, "That's a great idea; we should all go to bed. Tomorrow is another long day." She clapped her hands to underline her words._

_Draco had never been more grateful for the fact that one of his friends had had terrible experiences. He knew why Pansy couldn't face open revolts and fights amongst their own. She rather favoured peaceful solutions. Safety had become truly important to Pansy after the attack on the Parkinson estate that had almost cost her father's life._

_The dynamic shifting after Pansy's intervention, Draco saw his last chance to win this situation over. "Wait a moment…," he started when one by one people got up and shuffled toward the door. He made to hurry after them, to keep them from leaving the room. However, a hard clap on his shoulder arrested his sentence and kept him from blocking the door. Goyle was almost as tall but two times wider than Draco. It wasn't he who spoke, however._

"_I worry about you, Malfoy. You have to stop doing this." Theo Nott stood himself in front of him like a rock midstream while the people streamed out of the room on his left and right like water going downriver. Draco saw his support system dissolve like salt in the sea._

_He could have bit his tongue when he heard his voice over the din of moving people, but he couldn't stop it before it was out. "Worry about yourself, Nott. Merlin knows what you are all running into like sheep to the slaughterhouse if you don't wake up and listen to me."_

_The knowing glance and the headshake from his former classmate confirmed that he was losing. Again. _

…

Longing for some comfort, he thought how Granger's cool hand had felt so soft on his burning forehead - gentle, really. Draco went on to scold himself about how he should never openly admit to this, but it was becoming silly. He couldn't go on denying any and every positive thing about Granger just because she was Muggle-born; even though he would be perfectly fine with simply abusing the advantages she had for him, the Slytherin way, and without affecting his low regard for her at all.

He strongly suspected that his limitation to use magic paired with the exertion of manual work had a weakening effect on him. It came as a pleasant surprise that Granger was leaking magic on him and that it helped him over his – temporary- weakness; as did her good nature. This was another thing he would never admit to, unless he was on his last breath: given the adversity of his fellow den members, he quite enjoyed Granger's good will. He knew, despite her previous threat, that she would never drop him like a hot stone unless she had very good reason. And he was not going to give her one.

Aside from her accidental magic showers, she was also quite reasonable.

He thought back to his talk with Granger after they'd left the Carlson's farm the day before. They had to walk quite a bit to get away from the obvious Apocalypto spell on the grounds, to be able to Apparate back to the den. The Apparition point was behind another billboard with Potter the Great throwing his fist in the air, in the middle of nowhere.

Potter's victory image on a loop – throw fist, grin, yell 'yeah', throw fist- was alternating with images of the Weaselette piercing the viewer with one of her fierce gazes that Draco couldn't help admitting were a bit on-turning. Despite her family's Blood-traitor status, Ginevra Weasley was a powerful pureblood witch with a right pretty head on her shoulders and a majestic name. Draco himself, as a Malfoy, wouldn't have been caught dead with her, of course, but he knew more than one pureblood mate who'd lusted after her Quidditch-trained body. His former Quidditch Captain, Marcus Flint, for one, wouldn't have minded bending her over a desk, as Draco'd heard him saying more than once. Bletchley, too, had "fan-girled" after games in the locker room over her tough manoeuvers when they had played against Gryffindor, only to be much mocked by his teammates.

Her fierceness melted away to a sweet smile, and several images showed her stirring a pot while holding a spoon, swinging a broom to clean a room, kicking a ball with a black and white pattern with her foot into a goal standing on a lawn, sitting on a sofa with her brothers and Potter to watch the tele, cheering and laughing, and opening a Muggle car in high heels with a bag full of groceries. She smiled out of the opened driver's window and joined Potter in the next image, beaming at her lover and taking his arm, and with a turn to the front she said triumphantly, "I'm Muggling it!"

Draco had heard enough from the other den members to know that these messages were shown all over the place. Draco was certain, seeing her up on the billboard as a poster face for the government would put a stop to any favourable thoughts about her amongst purebloods. But he also knew that the Weasleys were well liked by everybody else; their connection to Potter had strengthened their societal standing as strong-minded defenders of anything Not-Voldemort, even if they were poor. Thus, everybody who had suffered from the war, and that was basically everybody but the highest-ranking purebloods, would gobble up her messages like ambrosia. He hated to admit that this shite would help considerably to turn the masses toward alternatives to magic.

But Draco didn't know who was supposed to see the billboard, out here, in the middle of nowhere; and he was quite certain that the little soft, brown balls at the bottom of one of the posts were actual animal droppings. He felt validated that nature believed the same way he did and acted out what he didn't dare to do.

Draco had been happy to go back to the den for the first time. He had witnessed the same cluelessness at the farm as the previous day without a suitable explanation. Anything to get him to his secluded room and away from crazy people and his glaring, spinning headache would do. However, feeling like his whole life was spinning out of control, pulling him under, he had to make sure that he wouldn't disappear with nobody to remember him. Granger was the only fixture in his life right now.

...

_"The boy's been obliviated, you know?" he said after a quarter-mile walk in silence. "The same way as some people at St. Mungo's." _

_"You don't know that," Granger refuted his claim._

_Draco remembered how he'd overheard some people talking to Granger. He had hovered close, in case he needed her for the most disgusting clean-ups, and he'd heard them recount the dreadful things happening to them. More than once these people had stopped their telling right before they'd come to the crucial point and started crying. Granger apparently had taken it as proof that these patients were overcome by emotions over their horrible fate, and she had gushed and crooned with sympathy. Draco, however, had noticed the stuttering, the confusion and, most importantly, the change in their magic surrounding them. It may have had to do with the fact that he had witnessed more than one atrocity when the Dark Lord had lived in the Manor. He was more than ready to believe the worst of his fellow human beings – Granger was not. Additionally, he missed his own magic, and particularly his wand, dearly and therefore sucked up everything that was remotely magical like a sponge; thus, hyper-sensitizing him to spurious traces, as if his Slytherin mind wasn't already primed to focus on people's weaknesses. He noticed subtle differences others didn't, like a change in the breeze in a photograph that had been tampered with - the hair flying to the right even though the wind obviously came from that direction. However, it was there and Draco would be damned if he didn't find out what in the world was happening; only to make good use of the knowledge, of course. One good use would be finding better accommodations; or having more access to his wand, the way the other den-people seemed to have because they didn't keep barking up the wrong tree, according to the government's opinion. _

_"Granger, how much proof do you need? Look at their symptoms. Remember Lockhart?" When she blushed, he took it as a sign that she_ did _recall. "I happened to see him at St. Mungo's, too, while I wandered, and I saw Longbottom's parents. This boy shows the same signs of Obliviation, completely oblivious to something that's directly in front of him. However, different from Lockhart, the boy only fails to remember one person. He told me his sister was dead."_

_Granger shook her head vehemently. "He's in shock, just like the patients at St. Mungo's. They don't _want_ to remember what happened to them. Abel's brain is not processing the fact that his sister was turned mad at the hands of the Death Eaters and obliterates her entirely. Who knows what they did to her, and if he actually witnessed it?"_

_Draco waved her comment away angrily. "It doesn't matter what they did to her." _

_When he heard Granger's sharp inhale, he added quickly without looking her way, "I don't mean it that way; I'm not a monster, Granger. I meant for what's wrong with Abel; it's not important what happened to her. I've never seen this before; it's an Obliviation, but not a normal one." He turned to her and saw that her dismay had moved to diffuse her anger. He drove on, trying to make her see that something was not right in Denmark. "Nobody is that good that they can Obliviate just one person from his mind and not the rest of his existence. Remember Lockhart."_

_"I do remember," Hermione said sharply. "What is your point, Malfoy?"_

_Draco felt her irritation in waves. Like standing over a boiling cauldron, he knew it would burn him badly if he stayed where he was, stayed his course, angering a temperamentally unstable Granger, but he couldn't step back. The "fumes" swirling around him felt too good to be true. A wizard starved of magic, he wondered why Granger, who was usually so cool and calculated, was so irregularly bothered by minimal things, but he wasn't going to question it. Despite its foreignness, the crackling tension coming from her felt energizing, a welcome relief from his own irritation. But he'd be damned if he told her, lest she turned off his only source of enjoyment these days, just to spite him._

_Taking a calming breath, Draco narrowed his eyes at her. "My point is that I want to be able to get a letter to my mother should anything happen to me. If there is somebody going around Obliviating people, he or she has to be high up. They would need permission from the Ministry; otherwise, it is a punishable offense. And like Smith implied, there are enforcers going after offenses. Given the way I am treated by the current government, I don't want to be their guinea pig for any such spells. Should anything like this happen to me, that I forget who I am and who I belong to, I want my parents to know. I want somebody to tell them what happened to me. I have no other way to reach the world outside of the den with the way you hold us captive. My mother will worry, and she has enough to worry about. You are going to be that person."_

_Hermione looked at him as if he had just suggested turning the moon pink for a change. Finally, she shook her head and replied sharply, "Why would I do that for you? In case, you didn't notice, I am still Harry Potter's best friend and in line with the 'current government,' as you put it so aptly. Why would I do anything for you and against them?"_

_He sneered at her aggressive tone. Blustering Gryffindors. It was so typical for her house, and yet, he knew that she listened. Granger always had her own mind. "Granger, you know full well that what you do here with us in the name of the government is wrong."_

"_The Minister-," she spat._

"_Makes the law, I get that," he interrupted derisively. "Doesn't make it right. And you know it."_

_He noticed with satisfaction that his words didn't fall on deaf ears. Granger fidgeted, which was a sure-fire way to say that Draco hit the jackpot in an argument with her; he'd seen it often enough at Hogwarts. He gave her the death stroke. _

"_Come on, Granger. Do you want to be responsible for a defenceless man- because, as you noted, I have no wand- being taken advantage of? In the name of the government? After everything you've done for them? It wouldn't be right. _You_ wouldn't feel right." He had approached her conspiratorily and now spoke almost in a whisper directly in her ear, moving some of her wild curls with his breath._

_Taking a calm step back, she sighed, and he knew he had won that little battle. "Alright, Malfoy, you have my word. In the, very unlikely, case that there's a crazy Ministry official going around and Obliviating people and should that person target you and make you forget who you are, I will take it upon myself to inform your mother." _

_Granger nodded at him to support her statement and he nodded in return. This was good enough for a binding agreement in wizard terms. Then, turning in their previous direction, they trudged on for another few minutes, until Draco spoke again._

_"It's not right."_

_Granger replied sarcastically, "There are many things that are not right." _

_Funny, Draco thought, this was exactly what Zabini had said the other day._

"_What do you mean exactly?" Hermione pressed when he didn't elaborate._ _She knew that the Ministry was on thin ice with its current politics. There would have to be only one law-abiding citizen noticing that they weren't exactly abiding by the Geneva Conventions and that the confiscation of wands was against wizard rights, especially under the circumstances. These young people weren't charged with anything. Malfoy's opinion didn't count, however. Nobody would listen to him anyway, former Death Eater that he was. People were still too frightened by what had happened not that long ago._

_Her deep frown and her harsh tone told him that her mood had flipped back to anger. However, Draco felt entitled to seize the opportunity. He had to make her see the dire circumstances if he was going to make her help him improve them – for his own benefit, of course._

"_The way you detain us without trial, without charge. Some of us are minors."_

_She rebuked him, harshly. "Would you have done anything different had Voldemort won?"_

_Shrugging nonchalantly, he scanned the landscape, his gaze landing yet on another Poster-Potter. Draco had a vague feeling that the posters were trailing him. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"_

_Granger flew off the handle. "Yes, it does. How can you stand there and accuse us when you would have done the same, or worse, had your side won?"_

_The thought struck Draco that his face would one day be completely stuck on smug, but he would worry about that later, if at all. Smugness served him well when he replied, "It would be a completely different thing. Purebloods are more powerful and therefore have more rights. We should have the right to treat you as we please." A weird little leer might have snuck into his smug mug at the moment. It disappeared quickly, however, when confronted by the pure fury in Granger's face. If the fury had been substantial, it would have incinerated everything within a ten-meter distance. He schooled his face back into smugness and felt immediately comfortable again. "As it is, take a look, we are all more powerful, bred for generations, and should-."_

_"What about me?" she interrupted him harshly._

_Her whisper halted him. He couldn't quite explain how her quiet voice could have such a force, but there it was._

_"What about you?" he asked in a daring tone._

_Swallowing as if she had to gather strength, Granger pressed her point out with unusual force. "Not only were many of you Voldemort-followers not purebloods, starting with Voldemort himself, I am more powerful than most of you."_

_A blink of doubt flashed through his eyes for a split-second, in light of her pulsing anger. Again, he felt the waves coming from her, like a life pulse, only magical. _

_He'd always known her to be magical, yet he'd always been taught that it wasn't right. Umbridge, in her heydays, had even asked Muggle-borns where they'd stolen their magic. It was utter nonsense, of course. If magic could be stolen or taken by force, Voldemort would have long ago milked anybody he could, and yet, and yet. Draco channelled his confusing thoughts in what he knew to be right because he'd been told more times he could count, and replied obstinately, "You are an exception, Granger. An aberration, if you like."_

_At her upset splutter, he countered, "Come on, Granger, what did you expect me to say?"_

_With narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw, Hermione couldn't let it go. "What about Harry?"_

_Blatantly arrogant, he replied, "The heir to an incredibly old magical family, even if his power is diluted by his Muggle-born mother. Which, I may add, most likely explains his stupidity." _

_"What about _Ron _?" Granger added resolutely, absolutely certain that Malfoy would stumble over a fault in his ideology at one point. Everybody knew how wrong this pureblood indoctrination was._

_He smirked at her exasperated tone when saying Ron's name. "Are you finally admitting he's a magical milksob?" _

_When she made a grimace of disgust over his comment, he shook his head contently and continued, "Weasley could be powerful. He's just not getting his brain behind it. Not that I'm surprised, there's not much brain to be had. Some goes for Longbottom. They are too distracted. True magic, powerful magic needs focus; and discipline; and vigilance to its effects. That is what you have going for you; that is what I've been taught since I could stand up and before I held a wand. It's what Potter finally learned when he pulled his head out of his arse, and what Weasel will always be missing, the blood traitor."_

_Hermione couldn't let that slide. "Harry learned the limits of magic and when not to use it."_

_The clear, grey eyes glowed in contempt. "Then he got the wrong end of the stick. There are no limits to magic. Just on how much you can wield. There is also no "wrong" or "malicious" magic; only the intention of the conjurer."_

_His cold arrogance told Hermione more than she needed to know. This attitude had been responsible for the recent war. She bit her lip in silent fury, so she wouldn't blow up in the face of this hypocrite who had whispered in fright when faced with the Apocalypto curse._

_"The only limit is to the mind of the wizard or witch who uses the magic, as I was saying; limits to schooling, educating, disciplining your mind. The earlier you begin, the more effective it is," he continued snidely. "This is what purebloods have been doing for centuries."_

_'It leaves Muggle-borns forever behind because they start so much later,' was left unsaid, but Hermione heard him loud and clear. In her cold fury, she thought perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all, to restrict magic for everybody, so that they would all be even. It hurt her just as much, but she could sacrifice if people like Malfoy would suffer some, too._

_"So, you're saying, there's no bad magic, just weak wizards and witches? Care to tell that to Carlson's cows?" she replied with spite._

_"Correct," Malfoy replied in stride. "It's a power, and there are some people who are too weak to master it; which is a lack of discipline, as I was saying."_

_Hermione startled. It rang too true, what he said. She wanted to rebuke him again; he was the scum of the new world; who cared what he said in an argument, trying to squeeze the situation as much as he could? Of course, she knew what he was trying to do when he was asking for favours. However, his words resonated in her centre - too weak to master it, too late to learn it properly, lack of discipline._

_Hermione trembled in her seemingly endless fury. She couldn't be too weak. She couldn't have been too late. She was the smartest witch her age, no spell was too difficult for her; she had mastered most of them even before a teacher instructed her. Malfoy had to be wrong, and she was going to tell him._

_She jutted her jaw forward, so it wouldn't tremble and impede her speech. Hermione didn't think she would be able to say this properly if she heard her voice tremble. _

_"If I were you, Malfoy, I would be careful what I said. Your family, your _father _may have had a lot of power by putting money in the right pockets, but those times are over. You have no power in this new order, no wand, no _home _to speak of, no protection; and if you speak such things aloud, some people might consider trying to prove you wrong. They may not care for the mindless babbling of a Malfoy youngster. They may take it seriously. _And _they may actually think they could perfectly do without. Forever."_

_Before the Final Battle, Draco would have given a snide remark in reply to Granger's little speech - derisive laughter and a cutting insult to put her in what he believed to be her place. As it were, when he opened his mouth to do just that, the truth of her words sank in. He paled when the realization dawned that she was right and stopped in his tracks as if doused by a bucket of ice water. _

_Habits be damned, he had no power in this new world. Everybody's place was up for grabs, except for the winning warriors'. _

_Granger gave a brief self-satisfied smirk at his silence. She added, "And if I were you, I wouldn't even trust my fellow den members to keep their mouths shut." Then, she turned to continue on their path, and commanded harshly, "Come along, now."_

_She threw one quick glance at the billboard towering over them displaying Harry shaking a vigorous fist while beaming as if he'd just won the Triwizard Tournament fair and square. With the way the poster was set up, she had the impression that Harry was constantly looking at her as she walked by. Even if she knew it was a trick of the camera focus, it unnerved her a little. However, she had no real reason for the feeling and blamed it on her frazzled state of mind. Harry was her best friend and she couldn't let him down by letting Malfoy continue in his misconstrued way. They had to beat this out of him, if it was the last thing they did. Then, they could all start anew._

_Hermione couldn't wait for that to happen. _

_..._

Lying in his bed, secluded from the world, contemplating Granger's little outburst, Draco felt his stomach revolting and threw up over the side of his bed, missing the quickly conjured pail completely. The stench of his own regurgitated stomach content on the floor made him sick again, and he couldn't suppress another hurl.

His belly empty, he lay back exhausted, gripping his wand tightly, stroking his magical extension fondly.

He recalled Smith, who was supervising for the day, coming in with Madame Braithwaite at wake-up time that morning. Smith had been reluctant to give Draco his wand and had thrown it to the floor when Madame Braithwaite had given him an exasperated look and a raised eyebrow. Draco had to lean out of his bed to pick it up, and he had been afraid that Smith would have stepped on his hand if the female supervisor hadn't been there.

Seeing him shivering, Smith had reluctantly agreed that Draco could stay in when Madame Braithwaite, an assistant-healer by training, had felt his forehead and decided he was too sick to leave the bed.

Draco knew exactly why Smith was so horrible to him. He recalled the multiple times Smith had shown up at the Manor, trying to get on his father's good side and luring some money out of him by suggesting business proposition that were nothing more than schemes to ease Ministry processes, otherwise named bribes, for the Malfoys and "similar-minded wizards".

The last time, Lucius had thrown him out by the scruff with a wave of his wand. Smith had gotten the message after that and not returned. That had been about a year before the Final Battle.

They had left Draco his wand for the day for his comfort in the confines of the den-house, since nobody else was around, and he felt much better with it in his hands. The magic soothed him and warmed him like chicken broth, but it still couldn't help with his overall hardship. In fact, while he greeted its soothing powers greedily, he was just as aware that he would have to give it up again come the night. It felt like his first exploration of his bits when he was little: it had felt so good and yet, it was forbidden and he would be punished if discovered. He hadn't really been able to enjoy his new-found pleasure because he'd known he would lose it just as quickly. It had taken him years to get over this initial trepidation, and it irked him that he felt the same way about his magic now.

Abandoned by his fellow detainees who were out for the day, Draco felt the loneliness creep into his bones. He had heard them chatter excitedly, his fellows, before they left. The hallway outside his tiny, white room had rung with laughter and quick teases and overall complacency while he lay here in shivers of misery.

He ached all over, so, of course, working with Granger was out of the question. Yet, he wondered if her presence for the day would have done him some good.

First of all, she would not have stood for Smith's treatment of Draco. She was a stickler for the rules; and the rules, first and foremost, included preserving the dignity of the den-people. Draco couldn't find fault that dignity was very important to Granger. He had seen hers abused when she writhed on the floor in front of his aunt and the by-standers in the Manor - bleeding from gashes, losing control over her bodily functions in pain, her body moving of its own accord in impossible and partially indecent forms that had Greyback touching the front of his trousers obscenely. Draco himself had felt disgusted by that beast's reaction. Animals, werewolves, all of them. Of course, she would fiercely protest wherever dignity was breached, even Draco's.

Apart from this, he wondered why she would not protest more. Even in line with the government, Granger had always been a great fighter for any kind of what she perceived as mistreatment, and the handling of the den-people had to be a sore spot for her. Yet, nothing. To Draco, it seemed that somehow the air had gone out of her. In light of the torture she had received, he didn't blame her for that either if it was the case. If he had experienced the same, he would have packed up and left when the battle was over. Draco wondered if she didn't for lack of ability or of motivation.

Draco listened to the bestial cry of a heron out in the moor while reclining on his tiny bed. With its sound like a ravaging bear, it made Draco snuggle deeply under his covers instinctively, as if he could hide from the imagined predator. It was futile. The bed was so small, he had literally fallen out of it the first night. Used to a four-poster double the width and much softer linens, he had slept so unruly, tossing and turning, that he only noticed the end of the bed when he'd reached it. Cursing his situation once more, he had climbed back in but hadn't been able to sleep again. None of the following nights had been much different.

Certainly, nightmares could have something to do with it, or lack of support. Surely, Granger received the needed support from her best friends - something that he, Draco, didn't have. There was no beating around the bush; he'd had cronies, he'd had hangers-on and gold-diggers, people who benefitted from a connection to the Malfoy family, but no friends. His only friend, who stood by him in every situation, loyal and unfailing, had been his wand, and he'd lost it. Lost it to Harry Potter of all people. Since Potter had defeated the Dark Lord and his side was now the government, who allowed all power to Muggle-borns, he would lose = the only thing he had always been absolutely sure was his to the end, until he died – magic. He threw up again when he came to this realization.

After he'd heaved himself back under his covers with, what seemed to him, inhuman effort, he gave a tired wave with his wand to vanish the vomit in front of his bed. Reclining again on his pillow and feeling the sweaty moisture in his neck when it touched the cool linen, he looked his new wand over. It worked for him, but it still felt foreign; just as foreign as Granger in her hot-headedness. He felt the magic in his wand, just as he felt the waves of anger in her like sweeping magic; the crackling power was so natural and yet, it felt so wrong. Everything felt so wrong.

His rant to Granger notwithstanding, the shoe was on the other foot now, wasn't it? Where he and his family had run the country through the Minister for Magic, Fudge, with the war everything had changed. He was now in the Ministry's power and defenceless against whatever they decided for him and his future. Nobody would champion him. Nobody championed the losers, and nobody particularly liked him. He and his obsessive mouth had taken care of that.

The old Slytherin rule was: tell people what they want to hear. Sometimes you have to bend your principles, you are not a Gryffindor. He'd certainly screwed that up by touting the old ideology when nobody wanted to hear it. The Ministry's outrageous ideas aside- abandon magic, preposterous- Granger was now the only thing standing between him and whatever the government thought necessary to do with him. Whether he liked it or not, liked _her _or not, he had to stay close to her in order to get out of this unscathed. Mudblood or not, she was his ticket out of there. He wouldn't be a Malfoy if he didn't use this; but at what costs?

He turned in his bed to grab the water glass on his nightstand. His suddenly tight throat was parched, and Draco was man enough to admit that he was deathly afraid. Never had he felt so vulnerable, so unprotected, so resource-less. Living with the Dark Lord had been terrifying, but at least he had been on his home turf. In this new world, everything was different. He couldn't even bargain any pity, the way anybody pitied the Carlsons. Nobody would ever pity a bully who received his comeuppance.

Perhaps he should try not to insult her so much. It went against his grain, but if he tried really hard …

Granger was his only hope to not be abandoned by the new system, and on top of this he received some magic through her. She wasn't entirely bad. At least, she listened, which was something he couldn't say for his fellow den-members anymore.

He only hoped _she _wouldn't abandon _him_.

* * *

_To CDG(guest): I cannot reply to your review because you were not logged in. Such is life. But to you, and all the other readers, wondering about Hermione's train of throughts and her POV: next chapter. I'm working on it. :-) Life's a bit busy right now, but the next chapter is the only thing I have to work on. Let's just say: people are fairly o_blivious_ in this fic. ;-)_


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